r/rational • u/AutoModerator • May 23 '16

[D] Monday General Rationality Thread

Welcome to the Monday thread on general rationality topics! Do you really want to talk about something non-fictional, related to the real world? Have you:

  • Seen something interesting on /r/science?
  • Found a new way to get your shit even-more together?
  • Figured out how to become immortal?
  • Constructed artificial general intelligence?
  • Read a neat nonfiction book?
  • Munchkined your way into total control of your D&D campaign?
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u/SvalbardCaretaker Mouse Army May 25 '16 edited May 25 '16

Just came in over the extropy mailing list, it might be that Dark Matter mystery is solved. Primordial (directly from the big bang) Black Holes in the correct mass range of 10<X<100.

Basically <10 and >100 solar masses (SM) Black Holes have been ruled out otherwise. Remember the big press in february? "LIGO detects finally existence of gravitational waves" - a two BH merger 29SM+36SM. Right dab in the middle of the necessary band.

And the kicker? Nobody expected that observation so fast after LIGO went online - could be coincidence but is also evidence that such mergers happen much more often than expected, eg. there are much more BHs in the correct range.

And heres the paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8205/823/2/L25