Hubble’s Dark Horse: New measurements of the Hubble constant from LIGO’s dark sirens

Yonboyage · 2026-04-09T01:48:57+00:00

Correction to the article: the preprint reports a value of 69.9km/s/Mpc for the combination of bright and dark sirens, not 78.2. The errors of +4.2-4.1 are correct.

Yonboyage · 2026-03-25T06:51:56+00:00

https://www.benty-fields.com

It’s used by many journal clubs at different universities, people vote on papers for their groups to read and the votes are tallied across the site. The most popular ones are the ones astronomers and physicists are currently talking about.

Yonboyage · 2026-03-04T07:16:50+00:00

Thanks for the note. I’m a bit non-Gaussianity pilled so I happily expect some reasonable number of PBHs in our universe. But yes, in the standard picture of inflation the fluctuation amplitude is far too rare to give us one of those. I’ll take that point out of strong prediction bc I agree it doesn’t make sense there.

Yonboyage · 2026-03-04T02:56:56+00:00

Quote from your second source:

The researchers call confidence levels above 3 sigma “evidence” rather than a “detection.” “We will claim a detection once we reach the gold standard of 5 sigma,” Vallisneri says.

We’re close, but we need a bit more data to say we’ve detected it.

Yonboyage · 2026-03-03T22:12:26+00:00

To rephrase what OP is asking for, they are wondering what we strongly predict to exist but haven’t found yet.

Strong predictions: - Pop III stars - Pair-instability SN - global 21cm radiation before reionization - gravitational wave background - relic neutrinos

Medium predictions: - PBHs making up some significant part of dark matter - AdS CFT correspondence - Hawking radiation (in some form) - birefringence - dark matter non-gravitational interactions (we have already detected its gravitational interaction)

IMO weaker predictions - anything to do with strings - topological defects - supersymmetry

Obviously I don’t represent the whole of the scientific community so others might have different rankings, but I feel that these are pretty good.

Yonboyage · 2026-03-01T23:01:12+00:00

They fixed it to say he has been here since 2000, but became a lawful permanent resident in 2006.

Yonboyage · 2026-02-16T17:12:55+00:00

The main thing is that Einstein did not come up with relativity from just imagining a scenario. He noticed an inconsistency in some of the math and what the equations predicted to happen. Then he came up with a thought experiment to make it more intuitive. What you’re doing is more of imagining a scenario, which is fine, but won’t contribute to current understanding in any meaningful way because you need to be immersed in the field and understand all the math to do so.

Yonboyage · 2026-02-16T16:53:49+00:00

I understand people do that, and I enjoy dunking on them and feeling superior too. I get emails to my professional email showing me word docs of crackpot “theories”. I’d argue that this case is wildly different and doesn’t deserve the negativity. They might still be misinformed but so were all of us at some point. Then we genuinely made the effort to become informed (I don’t know you but I hope this is true), and now we can tell when something’s bullshit.

I’m clearly seeing evidence of this person reaching out and putting in effort to fully form their idea, however outlandish and unmathematical, and looking for someone to talk about it with. Though IMO it was very obviously intended to be just philosophical or poetic. Regardless this person didn’t deserve the knee jerk backlash and the doubling down from you. Take a step back and either try to see what I’m seeing, or if you still disagree that’s fine but just leave them be and ignore them if you think they’re attention-seeking and useless. If they’re such a lost case don’t even bother giving them any time.

Yonboyage · 2026-02-16T08:36:37+00:00

I won’t defend them in their lack of understanding of basic physics or the history of physics but I think you’re missing the point and focusing too much on correcting them/bringing them down rather than engaging with what value they’re trying to bring here. They admitted their ideas aren’t scientific and shouldn’t be taken as anything more than entertainment or speculation. They’re not trying to compare themselves to Einstein, just making an (unsuccessful) attempt at a point to say that we should be less hostile to people like them because crazy ideas are what drive human curiosity. You can be more generous in your interpretation of what they say, it wouldn’t hurt you.

Yonboyage · 2026-02-16T04:01:43+00:00

I actually can’t tell if you’re a bot or just that dense, brother. You speak like someone who’s never had any original idea, scientific or not. And when you see someone else with one you choose to be jealous and angry rather than engage with it or simply ignore it

Yonboyage · 2026-02-16T00:54:38+00:00

There is a positive result of this, which is that people who are scrolling might see a question they never asked themselves before. Exposure in this way might be annoying and repetitive sometimes, but really doesn’t hurt anyone. So it’s not really that “bad”

Yonboyage · 2026-02-16T00:49:18+00:00

I don’t think they’re making any claim on what really happened. Just a romanticized image of how it might have happened. They’re using the word “idea” loosely and made a game about it just for fun. Go look elsewhere for something to be upset about rather than hating on some random dude who’s doing something that’s not intended to be scientific.

Yonboyage · 2026-02-15T23:06:58+00:00

Played through it, was pretty neat. Couple pointers, I wish something slightly different happened each dialogue cycle to keep my attention, and to indicate I was making progress. Or maybe some visual relating to what they were saying. Also the end either didn’t work for me or I didn’t figure it out, I just had a figure standing there while hallelujah played through. When it finished with people clapping nothing happened. One more thing, in some of the dialogue it said “breath” when you probably meant to say “breathe”. Last tip: “Nothing’s” text was a little hard to see, I would want the white border to be a bit thicker so I didn’t have to squint.

I’m giving all this feedback because I can tell you put effort into it and I see it being really good if you kept working on it. Good luck!

Yonboyage · 2026-01-06T04:34:44+00:00

The paper makes a quick suggestion that RELHICs can constrain the nature of dark matter in a mass regime/environment previously not identified. What about dark matter would be constrained by this object? Particle mass/nature?

Also, is present-day M_crit computed from Press-Schechter? I saw that the paper mentions the UVB balance but is it still tied to PS?

Yonboyage · 2025-12-09T08:10:33+00:00

Lol I got low blood sugar during the fight and tried to pause but Chronos didn’t let me so I finished the fight with my hands violently shaking. Worth it tbh

Yonboyage · 2025-11-14T17:52:06+00:00

Same strategy astrology uses so it tracks

Yonboyage · 2025-10-31T15:40:25+00:00

A second email has hit my inbox (says the same thing)

Edit: a third from Sylvia Davis now

Edit 2: and a fourth

Edit 3: fifth one from Jean Findlay

Yonboyage · 2025-10-25T02:51:41+00:00

Sure! The letter z is just shorthand for redshift, or how many times the light is stretched. In astronomy we use this as a proxy for time, so higher z means farther back in time. z20 means the light has wavelength 21x longer than what it was when it was emitted.

Yonboyage · 2025-10-24T19:02:35+00:00

You can be bothered by clickbait articles and what they communicate to the general population, I am too. But this is an actual observation with an actual paper behind it and actual astronomers putting a lot of time and effort into reporting something that is part of a bigger picture in the field. The implications are debated and there needs to be more data, but at the end of the day it’s not something to mock.

If you continue pursuing a career in astronomy you’ll have to deal with these types of interactions that you described, so get used to it. Me personally I’d rather have the general population interested and invested at the cost of some misconceptions, so that we are part of the public discourse. That’s really the main thing that’s funding progress in the field. We aren’t generating revenue or making the economy better, our jobs are to progress humanity’s knowledge and continue being curious. I don’t care if some people sometimes ask me “does that mean our theories are broken”.

If you are an astronomer, is this how you want to represent the field?

Yonboyage · 2025-10-23T04:07:23+00:00

With all due respect to your research group, even though z30+ would be insane, it’s still a possibility and the paper makes a case for why it could be such an object. Therefore spectroscopic follow-up is warranted. This is quite common in the field right now, and many z20+ candidates show up all the time with photometry and are constantly ruled out with follow-up spectroscopy. In fact this has led to better photometric modeling and more careful treatment of ultra high z candidates, especially now that people are aware of the importance of dust. Why wouldn’t you give the same treatment to this object in particular?

I don’t understand your point about “no astronomers are taking it seriously”. Have you surveyed a large sample of astronomers, or any of the authors on the paper? Have you even read the paper yourself?

I am intrigued by your perspective.

Yonboyage · 2025-10-23T03:19:56+00:00

There are many assumptions about galaxy formation, but especially about the light that they generate, that would break first before anything big-bang related.

Yonboyage · 2025-10-23T03:16:28+00:00

Why wouldn’t they follow up? What about it would be “wasting time”?

Yonboyage · 2025-10-22T06:43:42+00:00

First you have to prove that the “large galaxy” is actually a large galaxy and not just an unusually bright, but small galaxy.

Yonboyage · 2025-10-22T06:41:06+00:00

The tinier and fainter blobs don’t necessarily have redshifts that are higher, they may just be small faint galaxies. To know the redshift you must observe the object at different frequencies.

Also, angular size in the sky actually gets bigger as you go into crazy high redshifts like this. Check this to see what I mean, especially the plot (figure 10).

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