De raadselachtige “little red dots” van de James Webb-telescoop zijn in deze lezing zwarte gaten in een tussenfase: bolvormig, stil, intrinsiek rood, zonder rotatievlak — daarom weinig röntgen, weinig geflikker en massas die astronomen overschatten.
de Big Bang, een oneindig/eeuwig universum en een gesloten streng zijn alle drie mogelijk; de theorie leest de eerste twee als projecties van de derde.
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J.Konstapel,Leiden,8-11-2026.
Aanleiding Volkskrant: Wat zijn die rode stippen die ruimtetelescoop James Webb waarneemt? Daarover is een ‘vrij intens gevecht’ ontstaan
The Vacuum.Net Theory is not a new rival to physics. It is a compression of existing theory. It uses one closed strand, three values (−1, 0, +1) that sum to zero, and one rule: what closes persists, and what does not close passes on. If all theory is fractal, that same rule must reappear at every scale. This essay tests the claim in one field: cosmology and astronomy.
The argument moves in six steps. Each step builds on the one before. Step 1 asks what happens if there is no beginning. Step 2 reads redshift as a ratio of depths along the strand. Step 3 reads the cosmic background radiation as the unclosed remainder of the whole strand. Step 4 reads the cosmic web as a three-trit cube placed in space. Step 5 reads stars as knots that do not close at their own scale. Step 6 reads black holes as windings that close everywhere, and the “little red dots” seen by the James Webb Space Telescope as black holes in a closure phase without a rotation plane.
Three cosmologies are treated as open possibilities, not as settled answers. They are the Big Bang of standard cosmology, an infinite or eternal universe, and a closed strand without beginning or end. Each has defenders, and each has evidence. The compression does not need to defeat the Big Bang reading. It reads the same numbers — the factor 1 + z, the temperature of 2.725 K, the voids and filaments, the weak X-rays of the red dots — as consequences of one rule. The essay ends with statements astronomers can check, with what remains to be unpacked, and with an annotated reference list that connects each step to the literature.
1. Introduction: a fight about red dots
On 5 November 2026, the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant reported a “fairly intense fight” among astronomers [1]. The subject is small red dots. They appear on almost every deep image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. Jorryt Matthee named them “little red dots” in 2023. He says a new paper about them appears almost every day [1, 2].
The facts are not in dispute. The dots are compact. They are red. Their hydrogen lines are strongly broadened. They show almost no X-rays and almost no variability [2–6]. They are common at redshifts of roughly 4 to 8, and rarer later [2, 3, 7].
The interpretation is in dispute. Five readings are on the table. First, they may be compact, massive galaxies that should not yet exist — the “universe breakers” of 2023 [8]. Second, they may be ordinary active galactic nuclei seen through a dusty torus, a view defended among others by Karina Caputi [1]. Third, they may be “black hole stars”: a black hole inside a dense, nearly spherical shell of hydrogen, proposed by Anna de Graaff and Rohan Naidu after the objects “The Cliff” and MoM-BH*-1 [9, 10]. Fourth, they may be young, low-mass black holes inside a dense ionized cocoon, where electron scattering broadens the lines and the masses drop by a factor of about one hundred [11, 12]. Fifth, they may be supermassive stars or quasi-stars, with no fully formed black hole yet [13–15].
Even the counting is contested. One group says there are many more red dots than blue dots. Another group says the reverse [1]. Every side appeals to Ockham’s razor. As Matthee puts it, what counts as “least exotic” is subjective [1].
This essay does not choose a side. It asks a different question. Suppose existing theory can be compressed into one rule. Then the same rule must describe the red dots — and the whole of cosmology around them. The question is not who is right. The question is whether the observations can be written in the language of the compression, and what follows if they can.
2. The compression
The Vacuum.Net Theory compresses existing theory into one strand and one rule. Its formal statement is the Ninth Edition, Foundations 9.2 and Physics 9.0, dated 27 October 2026 [19]. All theorem numbers below refer to it.
The ground statements. There is exactly one strand, and every distinction is a loop: the strand returns to a place it has been (N1). Light is a location on the strand and moves with the speed of light. There is no medium, only the path light takes along the windings. Length and time are not variables of the universe. They are human reference points, calibrated on the day cycle of sun and moon. Everything measured is therefore a ratio. The only source of complexity is that the strand is wound, and a winding is a knot.
The trinity and closure. Beneath the axioms lies one ground: three values, −1, 0 and +1, whose sum is zero. They are the digits of balanced ternary [19]. A sum of trits keeps its residue modulo 3 at its own scale and passes the rest on as a carry to the next scale (T1). The shortest return that goes round takes three steps, so a window is three trits (T2). Of the 27 possible windows, exactly 9 close: those whose three trits are all equal or all different (T3, T4). The rule of closure (N2) says: a loop persists if and only if it lies in a closed window. What does not close passes on as tension. There is no external selector.
Three elementary closures. Every closed trit word reduces to three pieces (T7). A “standing” pattern (0) has winding number 0 and passes nothing on. A “meeting” (x, −x) also has winding number 0. A “ring” (x, x, x) has winding number ±1 and passes ±1 to the next scale. A ring that closes at its own scale becomes one passage of the next (T7.1). This is the scale axiom N5 as arithmetic. Merged into blocks, the coarse strand obeys the same rules again. What does not close at one scale is the material of the next. Two further results carry weight in cosmology. A seam between two different closed windows always carries tension; only a seam between equal windows is tension-free (T11). And under the rewrite R(t)ᵢ = −(tᵢ₋₁ + tᵢ₊₁), the rings that close everywhere are fixed points, while rings that are not fixed end in cycles (T10, computed for n = 3 to 10).
Two ladders and the comma. Merging meetings doubles. Merging rings triples. After a merges of meetings and b merges of rings, one coarse passage holds 2ᵃ·3ᵇ finest passages (T15). Since 2ⁿ ≠ 3ᵏ for all n, k > 0, the two ladders never meet exactly (T16). Their best near-meetings occur at the closure depths 1, 2, 5, 12, 41, 53, 306, 665, 15601, and so on — the denominators of the convergents of log₂3 (T17). At depth 12, 3¹² is close to 2¹⁹, with a residue of 1.35 percent — the Pythagorean comma of 23.46 cents. At depth 665 the residue is 0.0044 percent. At depth 15601 it is 0.0018 percent (T18). The residue never vanishes. The net never closes completely.
The first knot. In three-dimensional space, three crossings are the least that cannot be undone. That is the trefoil, which is chiral (T19, T20). A rotor returns to its initial state only after 4π (T21). The Hopf charge is conserved without appeal to Noether’s theorem (T22). The electron corresponds to light closed on itself in a double loop, after Williamson and van der Mark (C4, I1) [25].
Where the compression comes from. The compression is assembled from existing work. The mark of distinction and its re-entry come from Spencer-Brown [20] and Kauffman [21, 22]. Kauffman’s eigenform O(A) = A is the formal side of N2. The nilpotent Dirac operator of Rowlands, Q² = 0 exactly on the mass shell, is read as closure (C3) [23]. Maxwell wrote his equations with one quaternion product that carries two readings [24]. Larson read space and time as two aspects of one motion [26]. Rosen asked which dynamics is its own fixed point [30]. ‘t Hooft’s cellular automaton interpretation shares the idea that a simple deterministic rule underlies quantum behaviour [28]. Chaitin supplies the measure: a theory is a program shorter than the data it produces [27]. A compression is good if the data come back out of it.
All theory is fractal. If all theory is fractal, every theory is a slice of the same pattern at another scale and in other words. This is why one rule can compress them, and why the compression can be rewritten in any theory. N5 states it formally. The test of this essay follows directly: if the rule is the pattern, cosmology must come out of it, step by step.
3. Three cosmologies as possibilities
Three pictures of the whole are possible. None is treated here as settled. Each has defenders, evidence and open problems.
The Big Bang. The standard picture grew from Friedmann’s expanding solutions of general relativity [32], Lemaître’s link between expansion and redshift [33], and Hubble’s distance–velocity relation [34]. It holds that the universe expanded from a hot, dense state about 13.8 billion years ago. Its defenders cite four lines of evidence. Redshift grows with distance [34], and distant supernovae run slower by exactly the factor 1 + z [52, 53]. The cosmic background radiation is a near-perfect blackbody at 2.725 K [35, 55, 56], and it was warmer in the past, in proportion to 1 + z [57, 58]. The light elements — hydrogen, helium, traces of deuterium and lithium — match a hot early phase [78]. And the pattern of fluctuations in the background radiation fits a six-parameter model with high precision [37].
The open problems are equally well known. The uniformity of the background needed inflation, an added early phase [36]. General relativity predicts its own breakdown at the start, a singularity [73]. Two thirds of the energy budget is “dark energy”, whose nature is unknown [38, 39]; DESI now finds hints that it changes over time [40]. And JWST sees massive galaxies and black holes earlier than models expected [8, 77].
An infinite or eternal universe. The idea of an endless universe is old. Einstein’s first cosmology of 1917 was static [31]. The steady-state theory of Bondi, Gold and Hoyle had no beginning: matter was created continuously as the universe expanded [41, 42]. Its successor, the quasi-steady-state cosmology, added cycles [43]. Modern cyclic models replace one beginning with an endless series of bounces [44]. Penrose’s conformal cyclic cosmology joins the remote future of one aeon to the beginning of the next [45].
A second family rejects expansion altogether. Zwicky proposed in 1929 that light loses energy on its way — “tired light” [51]. Lerner and colleagues argue that the surface brightness of galaxies fits a static universe better than an expanding one [49]. López-Corredoira lists the tensions in the standard model in detail [50]. The defenders of an endless universe point to the singularity, and to the need for inflation and dark energy, as signs of a wrong premise. Their critics reply with three observations: the blackbody shape of the background radiation [55], the factor 1 + z in supernova durations, which tired light does not produce [52, 53], and the Tolman surface-brightness test as read by Lubin and Sandage [54]. An infinite universe also raises Olbers’ old question of why the night sky is dark [47]. And it implies that every finite configuration repeats infinitely often [46].
A closed strand. A third possibility is finite but without boundary. Einstein’s static universe of 1917 was already closed [31]. Luminet and colleagues proposed in 2003 that space may be a finite dodecahedral space, to explain the weak large-angle correlations in the background radiation [48].
The compression takes this third road, but in a specific form. The universe is one closed strand, with nothing in it but the path of light. Closed means finite in topology. But the process never ends: by the comma, the strand never closes completely (T16–T18). The compression is therefore closed in form and eternal in process.
How the compression reads the other two. The compression does not reject the other pictures. It reads them as two projections of itself. The Big Bang is the starting point of the observer, projected onto the whole. On a closed strand, any passage can serve as the first one (N3, T13). Reading backwards from our position, all windings seem to converge on one start. The infinite universe is the endless count of passages. The process has no last step, because the residue of the comma is always passed on.
| Big Bang | Infinite / eternal | Closed strand | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beginning | Yes, 13.8 billion years ago | No | No: a closed configuration has no starting point |
| End | Open (depends on dark energy) | No | No: the comma never closes |
| Size | Finite past, possibly infinite space | Infinite | Finite in topology, unbounded |
| Redshift | Expansion of space | Energy loss or other mechanism | A ratio of depths along the strand |
| Background radiation | Afterglow of the hot start | Thermalised starlight or other | The unclosed remainder of the strand |
| Main open problem | Singularity, inflation, dark energy | Blackbody shape, supernova durations | Unpacking masses and constants |
4. Step 1: if there is no beginning, what happens?
Without a beginning, what happens is an endless circulation. Light runs round one closed strand. What closes stands as structure. What does not close cycles and is passed on to deeper layers. Because of the comma, it is never finished.
A closed strand has no starting point. A closed configuration is read without a start. The compression counts it as a rotation class, not as a word with a first letter. The number of such classes of n trits is the necklace count g(n) = (1/n) Σ φ(n/d) 3ᵈ, which gives 3, 6, 11, 24, 51, 130 for n = 1 to 6 (T13). “No beginning” is therefore not an extra assumption. It follows from closure.
The “first” is the place of the reader. N3 says that the first passage through a node fixes the direction; later passages are read relative to it. On a closed strand, every passage can play that role. The beginning is not an event of the universe. It is the point from which the universe is read. This is how the compression reads the Big Bang.
Passage itself changes nothing. In the address layer, the only thing that can happen is passage. Any local rule that conserves the balance sum and lets every state return is the identity or a shift. This was checked exhaustively: all 3¹³ = 1,594,323 sign-symmetric rules, and all 144 conserving flux-form rules on a ring of five. Light running round the strand is a shift. It changes no address.
What closes stays, and what does not close passes on. At each passage, three consecutive trits form a window. A closed window leaves the structure standing (N2). An open window passes its rest on as tension. A closed ring passes ±1 to the next scale (T7.1). Deeper layers therefore form continuously, each from what the layer below could not close (N5).
It repeats in cycles. Under the rewrite R, only rings that close everywhere are fixed points. All others end in cycles (T10). What does not come to rest does not drift without direction. It pulses.
There is no end either. The ladders ×2 and ×3 never meet (T16). There is always a residue, and it is always passed on. A fully closed final state does not exist.
The consequence for cosmology is direct. Cosmology is not a history from an origin. It is the reading of a cycle from our position inside it. “Earlier” and “later” become “further along the path” and “nearer along the path”. This is consistent with the ground statement that time is a human reference, not a variable of the universe. Cyclic cosmologies [44, 45] also remove the single beginning, but they keep a time axis on which cycles follow each other. The compression keeps the cycles and drops the external time axis: the cycle is the strand itself.
5. Step 2: redshift as a ratio of depths
Redshift is the ratio between the number of passages per period there and here. It grows with the number of scale steps along the path, and it applies to every period at once. That is why the colour of a spectral line and the slowing of a supernova are the same number.
What is measured is a ratio: the wavelength that arrives, divided by the wavelength of the same line here. That number is 1 + z. Nothing more is measured.
A period is a count of passages. Length and time are human reference points. A wavelength or a period is therefore a number of passages of light, expressed in our own unit.
Each scale step changes the count. A closed ring of three passages becomes one passage of the next scale (T7.1). One coarse passage holds 2ᵃ·3ᵇ fine passages (T15). Light that comes from a place on the path a different number of scale steps away from us has a different count of passages per period. That ratio is 1 + z. In this reading, redshift is neither a velocity nor a stretching of space.
Why can z take any value? The ladders ×2 and ×3 never meet, so the combinations 2ᵃ·3ᵇ lie dense on a logarithmic scale (T16, Kronecker’s theorem). Every ratio can be approximated. That is why we see a smooth range of redshifts, not discrete jumps.
Why is further redder? Further along the path means more scale steps. Each step multiplies, so the relation is logarithmic: ln(1 + z) is proportional to the number of steps. Nearby, where z is small, ln(1 + z) ≈ z, and this reduces to z proportional to distance: Hubble’s law [34], read as a count of the scales passed.
The slow supernovae follow by themselves. This is the observation most often cited for expansion. Distant type Ia supernovae last longer by exactly 1 + z. This was first shown by Goldhaber and colleagues [52] and confirmed by the Dark Energy Survey out to z ≈ 1.2 [53]. A supernova at z = 1 runs twice as slowly as one nearby. In the compression, 1 + z is a ratio of counts of passages. That ratio applies to every period of the source: to the oscillation of a spectral line and to the duration of a light curve. Nothing needs to stretch.
The difference with tired light is precise. Zwicky’s tired light [51] also gives a logarithmic law, but it lowers only the energy of each photon. It leaves durations untouched, and the supernova data reject it [52, 53]. The compression differs at exactly this point. It does not take energy from the light. It changes the count by which every period is read. Frequency and duration therefore change together.
The difference with expansion is a difference of reading. In standard cosmology, the same factor 1 + z is read as the stretching of space during the light’s travel [33, 34]. In the compression it is a difference in depth on one closed strand. The number is the same. The meaning differs.
Surface brightness remains open. The Tolman test asks how the surface brightness of galaxies falls with redshift. Lubin and Sandage read it as support for expansion [54]. Lerner and colleagues read it as support for a static universe [49]. The compression predicts that surface brightness, like any period-based quantity, follows the same count of passages. Working out its exact power of 1 + z is a step still to be taken.
6. Step 3: the cosmic background radiation
The background radiation is the unclosed remainder of the whole strand, fully mixed and therefore a blackbody. It is the same everywhere because the strand has no centre. Its temperature is a ratio. The small residues of the comma are its small deviations.
What is measured is light from all directions with one spectral shape: a near-perfect blackbody at 2.72548 K [55, 56], first found by Penzias and Wilson in 1965 [35]. It deviates by about one part in 100,000 from direction to direction [37]. One side of the sky is slightly warmer than the other: the dipole.
A blackbody is the state without preference. When trits are distributed uniformly, a window closes with probability 1/3 (T6). That is the free state, in which no winding dominates. A blackbody is exactly the spectrum of maximal mixing. The background radiation is then what remains when all open passages of all scales are counted together: the rest that closes nowhere (N2), read from our depth. It is not the afterglow of a beginning. It is the background of passing-on itself.
There was a temperature before 1965. Eddington estimated in 1926 that the “temperature of space”, heated by starlight, is 3.18 K [59]. That estimate concerned diffuse starlight, not a cosmic background. But it shows that a few kelvin is the natural floor of a radiating universe without a hot start. The compression reads the floor as the mixed remainder of all scales.
Why is it the same in all directions? A closed strand has no starting point and no centre (T13). No place is special, so the remainder arrives equally from every side. In standard cosmology this uniformity is the horizon problem, solved by adding inflation [36]. In the compression it follows from closure.
Why was it warmer further away? A temperature is a characteristic period, and a period is a count of passages. The same ratio therefore applies: T(z) = T₀(1 + z), with T₀ = 2.725 K. This has been measured with molecules and atoms in distant gas clouds, at z = 2.34 [57] and at z = 0.89 [58]. At z = 6, the redshift of many little red dots, it gives 2.725 × 7 = 19.1 K. The compression reads this not as cooling over time but as the same ratio of depths that turns lines red.
The dipole has a home. Our own winding has a direction: the first passage fixes it (N3). Whoever reads along the path sees the remainder ahead slightly differently from the remainder behind.
The small deviations match the comma. Because of the comma nothing closes completely. At the deep near-closures the residue is 4.4 × 10⁻⁵ at depth 665, and 1.8 × 10⁻⁵ at depth 15601 (T18). The measured deviations in the background radiation lie around 10⁻⁵ [37]. This is a numerical correspondence. Deriving the full pattern of the deviations — the angular power spectrum with its acoustic peaks — from the closure depths is still to be done.
A finite shape is also possible. Luminet and colleagues noted that the background radiation shows weaker correlations at the largest angles than an infinite flat space predicts, and proposed a finite dodecahedral space [48]. A closed strand is finite in topology as well. Whether its geometry leaves the same signature at the largest angles is a question the compression can answer once the depth of our own winding is fixed.
7. Step 4: galaxies and the cosmic web
A galaxy is a knot at galactic scale. The cosmic web is the trit cube placed in space: voids close, walls never, filaments half, and nodes only when all three directions agree. Spiral and elliptical galaxies are the two ways of closing.
What is seen is not random. Galaxies form a web of four kinds of environment: voids, walls (sheets), filaments and nodes (clusters) [60, 61]. Voids take about 77 percent of the volume but hold less than 15 percent of the mass [63, 64]. Filaments and clusters are the most prominent parts of the web [63]. In the standard picture, matter flows from voids to walls, from walls to filaments, and from filaments to nodes [60, 61, 63].
The four kinds are the trit cube. Each cell of the cube {T, 0, 1}³ has 0, 1, 2 or 3 nonzero coordinates. The numbers of cells are 1, 6, 12 and 8 (T5). Read “nonzero” as “contracted in that direction”, and the four kinds of the web appear. Cosmologists use exactly this classification: the T-web counts in how many directions matter is collapsing [62].
| Nonzero coordinates | Element of the web | Cells in the cube | Cells that close | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Void | 1 | 1 (the centre) | Stable; largest by volume |
| 1 | Wall (sheet) | 6 | 0 | Never an end state; passes on |
| 2 | Filament | 12 | 6 (opposite signs) | Half stable; carries the flow |
| 3 | Node (cluster) | 8 | 2 (all signs equal) | End point of full contraction |
Which kinds are stable? The centre closes, so voids are stable and large. No cell with one nonzero coordinate closes, so walls are never end states. In standard cosmology these are Zel’dovich’s “pancakes”, which collapse further into filaments [60]. Of the cells with two nonzero coordinates, six close: those with opposite signs. Filaments are half stable and carry the flow. Of the cells with three, only two close: those with all signs equal. Nodes are the end point of complete contraction. The sequence void → wall → filament → node is one direction more each time, until the window closes.
A galaxy is a knot at large scale. What does not close at the scale of stars is the material of the scale above (N5). A galaxy consists of stellar windings, and it carries a residue that takes it up into a group, a cluster and the web. At the largest scales the web is the same everywhere, because the closed strand has no centre.
There are two forms of galaxy, and there are two ways to close (T7). A meeting has winding number 0: elliptical galaxies, which hardly rotate as a whole. A ring has winding number ±1: spiral galaxies, with a clear sense of rotation and a handedness in their arms. The compression thus reads the classic division of galaxies as the two elementary closures.
Why do the outer parts rotate too fast? At the edge of a galaxy, the crossover rule of the compression applies: one full turn per mesh. It gives the acceleration scale a₀ = cH₀/2π = 1.08 × 10⁻¹⁰ m s⁻² for H₀ = 70 km s⁻¹ Mpc⁻¹ (I3) [19]. The scale measured from rotation curves is 1.2 × 10⁻¹⁰ m s⁻² [65–67]. Below this acceleration, the rotation stops falling. Milgrom found the scale empirically in 1983 and noted its closeness to cH₀/2π [65]. The compression reads the 2π as one geometric turn per mesh: the passage to the next scale. No dark-matter particle is needed in this reading (P4).
8. Step 5: stars
A star is a knot that does not fully close at its own scale. Its form is what closes; its light is what passes on. Fusion is a deeper closure that releases a remainder, and the cycles of stars are the cycles of rings that are not fixed points.
What is seen is familiar. Stars shine long and steadily. In their cores they convert hydrogen into helium. Four hydrogen nuclei (4 × 1.00728 u) become one helium nucleus (4.0015 u); about 0.7 percent of the mass is released as energy. Eddington proposed this source in 1920 [68]. Bethe worked out the reactions in 1939 [69]. Heavier elements are built in later stages and in explosions [70]. Many stars pulsate or have cycles; the Sun’s activity follows a cycle of about 11 years, found by Schwabe in 1844 [71]. Stars end as white dwarfs, neutron stars or black holes, sometimes through a supernova [72].
A star is a knot that does not close at its own scale. Inside a galaxy, a star is a winding whose windows do not all close. What does not close passes on as tension (N2). Shining is that passing-on: the open rest leaves the winding as light. A star is not a fire in space. It is a place where the strand keeps passing on what it cannot close.
Why does a star hold together? What closes persists (N2): that is the form of the star. In the compression, gravity is a form of electromagnetism. Holding together is then not a separate force. It is the closed windings maintaining themselves. A star is a balance between the part that closes — its form — and the part that passes on — its light.
Fusion is windings that close deeper. Four hydrogen nuclei become one helium nucleus: two merges on the ×2 ladder (2 × 2 = 4, T15). Not everything fits into the new, deeper closure. The part that does not fit, the 0.7 percent, is passed on. That is the light of the star.
Why do stars pulsate and have cycles? Under the rewrite R, only rings that close everywhere are fixed points. Rings that are not fixed end in cycles (T10). A star is such a ring: it does not come to rest but repeats. The solar cycle and the pulsation of variable stars are, in this reading, those cycles.
The end of a star is the end of its remainder. When the remainder that can be passed on runs out, what remains is what closes. A white dwarf or neutron star is a dense winding that closes almost everything. A black hole is a fully closed deep winding, silent because it passes nothing on. A supernova is the sudden release of tension held in the seams between windings that do not match (T11).
What is not yet unpacked here is scale. Why does luminosity rise so steeply with mass, and why do stars lie between roughly 0.08 and 150 solar masses? For this, the depth of a winding must be tied to its rate of passing on.
9. Step 6: black holes and the little red dots
A black hole is a winding that closes everywhere and is therefore silent; its light comes from the seam around it. The little red dots are black holes in the meeting phase, without a rotation plane: spherical, quiet, intrinsically red, and lighter than the line-width rule suggests. When they acquire a sense of rotation, they become ordinary active nuclei with a disk, jets and X-rays.
9.1 Black holes
A black hole is a winding that closes everywhere. A ring in which every window closes is a fixed point of the rewrite (T10). It reproduces itself and passes nothing on. What passes nothing on does not radiate. That is why a black hole is dark. It is not a hole, and there is no point of infinite density. It is the deepest rest of the strand. General relativity, by contrast, predicts a singularity once collapse begins [72, 73].
The horizon is a seam. Around the closed winding lies open strand. A seam between two different windings always carries tension; only a seam between equal windows is tension-free (T11). All the light we see near black holes — the ring imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope [74, 75], the glowing matter around it, the jets — comes from that seam, not from the black hole itself. Mazur and Mottola’s gravastar, a compact object without singularity whose interior is in a different state from its exterior, is a kindred picture in the language of general relativity [76].
There are two kinds of closure, and therefore two kinds of black hole. A meeting closure (x, −x) has winding number 0 and no rotation plane; it produces a quiet, compact object. A ring closure (x, x, x) has winding number ±1 and a rotation plane; it produces a disk, jets along the axis, and X-rays where the disk discharges — an ordinary active nucleus.
9.2 The little red dots as the meeting phase
Each observed property of the red dots now has a place.
They are compact because the winding is deep. Most red dots are unresolved even by JWST [2, 3].
They are a sphere, not a torus. A meeting closure has no rotation plane. This matches de Graaff’s and Naidu’s nearly spherical, dense hydrogen envelope [9, 10] better than Caputi’s dusty torus [1]. Their own estimate supports the scale: a star-like photosphere of 5000–5800 K radiating 10¹⁰–10¹¹ solar luminosities has a radius of about 460–1960 AU, far beyond Pluto’s 40 AU, as de Volkskrant reports [1].
They are quiet: no X-rays, no flicker. X-rays and variability belong to the discharge of a rotating disk. Without a rotation plane there is no disk. Deep stacking finds the red dots X-ray weak [5, 6]. Their radio emission is weak as well [11]: there are no jets.
They are red in themselves. Light from the seam passes through many closed layers. Each layer changes the count of passages, so the light leaves redder. This is the same rule as cosmological redshift, applied locally. In the standard picture the same effect is attributed to absorption in dense gas, which also produces the strong Balmer break [9, 16].
They have broad hydrogen lines. In a thick seam, the light runs through many neighbouring depths. Rusakov and colleagues call it electron scattering: repeated passage [11]. Sneppen and colleagues reproduce the spectra this way and find the predicted correlations between break strength and line width [12].
9.3 The masses
In the compression, mass is depth: the number of windings. The astronomers’ rule of thumb reads line width as velocity and velocity as mass. Mass scales with velocity squared, so a factor 10 in width is a factor 100 in mass. In a thick seam, the width comes from passages, not from velocity. The rule then overestimates the mass. This is what Rusakov and colleagues found: black holes about a hundred times lighter than first estimated, among the least massive known at high redshift [11]. Sneppen and colleagues find typical masses of order a million solar masses [12]. Nemmen notes that the result depends on how much ionised gas the cocoon holds [17].
A check on scale: the Eddington luminosity of a black hole of 10⁶ solar masses is about 1.3 × 10³⁷ W, or 3.3 × 10¹⁰ solar luminosities. This matches the brightness of the red dots and the conclusion that they grow close to the Eddington limit [11].
9.4 Why they were common “early”
“Early” is “further along the path”. The meeting phase is a transition. A winding stays silent and closed, or it acquires a sense of rotation and becomes an ordinary active nucleus. Or its open remainder grows into a blue galaxy around it. Matthee points out the asymmetry: a red dot can hide in a blue galaxy, but a blue dot cannot hide in a red one [1]. N5 states the same: the closed core can sit inside the open rest of the next scale, not the reverse.
9.5 Chicken or egg
De Graaff asks which came first, the black hole or the galaxy [1]. In the compression, neither came first. The black hole — the closed core — and the galaxy — the open rest at the next scale — are one knot at two scales. They arise together. Quasi-star models [13, 14] and supermassive-star models [15] describe this joint arising in the language of stellar structure.
9.6 What follows
The reading yields a statement astronomers can check: as soon as a little red dot shows net rotation or jets, X-rays must appear. A red dot with a clear rotation plane and no X-rays would contradict the meeting-phase reading.
10. Statements astronomers can check
The compression yields six statements that existing or planned data can address. Each follows from a step above, and each states what would contradict it.
| Statement | From | Data that can check it | What would contradict it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rotation or jets in a little red dot come with X-rays | Step 6 | JWST integral-field kinematics with Chandra or future X-ray missions [5, 6] | A red dot with a clear rotation plane and no X-rays |
| Every period of a source shifts by the same 1 + z | Step 2 | Supernova light curves and spectra in one sample [52, 53] | A duration factor that differs from the spectral 1 + z |
| ln(1 + z) grows in proportion to the number of scale steps along the path | Step 2 | Distance indicators that do not assume an expansion model | A relation that cannot be written as a count of scale steps |
| The background temperature follows T₀(1 + z) at every redshift | Step 3 | Molecular and atomic thermometers in distant clouds [57, 58] | A departure from the linear law |
| Walls are never end states; filaments and nodes are | Step 4 | Cosmic-web catalogues by T-web or NEXUS [62–64] | Long-lived, stable walls with no flow into filaments |
| The acceleration scale is cH₀/2π | Step 4 | Rotation curves with an independent H₀ [65–67] | A scale that does not track H₀ |
The first statement is the sharpest for the current debate. De Graaff’s team has new JWST observations planned [9]. Posting the statement, dated, before those results appear is the strongest form of exposure.
11. What remains to be unpacked
A compression is complete when the data come back out of it [27]. Seven unpackings are still to be done for cosmology. The Physics document of the Ninth Edition names the related open calculations O1 and O3–O8 [19].
- The light elements. Standard cosmology predicts about 75 percent hydrogen and 25 percent helium by mass, with traces of deuterium and lithium [78]. The compression must give these ratios as closure depths.
- The pattern of the background deviations. The angular power spectrum with its acoustic peaks [37] must follow from the closure depths, not only the overall level of 10⁻⁵.
- The surface-brightness law. The exact power of 1 + z with which surface brightness falls, which decides the Tolman test [49, 54].
- The mass spectrum and the constants. The proton–electron mass ratio of 1836, the fine-structure constant α and the Hubble constant (O3, O7, O8).
- Luminosity and mass of stars. Why stellar luminosity rises so steeply with mass, and why stars lie between about 0.08 and 150 solar masses.
- The depth of our own winding. The reading position fixes the dipole, the largest-angle signature of a finite strand [48] and the zero point of all redshifts.
- Gravity as electromagnetism. The orbital laws of planets and stars must come out of the closed windings, without a separate force.
12. Conclusion
One rule — what closes persists, what does not close passes on — reads the whole of cosmology in six steps. Without a beginning, light circulates on a closed strand. Redshift is a ratio of depths, and it stretches every period at once. The background radiation is the mixed remainder of all scales. The cosmic web is the trit cube in space. Stars are knots that do not close at their own scale. Black holes are windings that close everywhere, and the little red dots are black holes in their meeting phase.
The Big Bang and the infinite universe remain possibilities. The compression reads them as projections of a closed strand: the Big Bang as the start of the reader, the infinite universe as the count that never ends. The three pictures share the same numbers. They differ in what the numbers mean.
The astronomers in de Volkskrant agree on one thing: the data are the data [1]. The compression agrees. What it adds is a single rule under which those data belong together — and a dated statement about the next data to come.
Annotated references
The little red dots
[1] Van Hal, G. (2026). “Wat zijn die rode stippen die ruimtetelescoop James Webb waarneemt? Daarover is een ‘vrij intens gevecht’ ontstaan.” de Volkskrant, 5 November 2026. The occasion of this essay. Interviews Matthee, Caputi and De Graaff; source of the quotes on Ockham’s razor, the red–blue counting dispute and the chicken-and-egg question.
[2] Matthee, J., et al. (2024). “Little Red Dots: an abundant population of faint active galactic nuclei at z ∼ 5 revealed by the EIGER and FRESCO JWST surveys.” The Astrophysical Journal 963, 129. The paper that named the class. Establishes compactness, red colour, broad Balmer lines and abundance.
[3] Kocevski, D. D., et al. (2025). “The Rise of Faint, Red AGN at z > 4: A Sample of Little Red Dots in the JWST Extragalactic Legacy Fields.” arXiv:2404.03576. The largest early sample; shows the rise and decline of the population with redshift and the high fraction of broad-line objects.
[4] Greene, J. E., et al. (2024). “UNCOVER spectroscopy confirms a surprising ubiquity of active galactic nuclei in red galaxies at z > 5.” The Astrophysical Journal 964, 39. Spectroscopic confirmation that most compact red sources show broad lines.
[5] Maiolino, R., et al. (2025). “JWST meets Chandra: a large population of Compton thick, feedback-free, and intrinsically X-ray weak AGN, with a sprinkle of SNe.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. arXiv:2405.00504. The key evidence for X-ray weakness. In Step 6, read as the absence of a discharging disk.
[6] Yue, M., et al. (2024). “Stacking X-ray observations of Little Red Dots: implications for their AGN properties.” arXiv:2404.13290. Stacked Chandra data: even the average red dot is X-ray faint.
[7] Vaida, D. D., & Farber, R. J. (2026). “Little Red Dots: The Assembly of Early Supermassive Black Holes in the JWST Era.” Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences. A compact review of all interpretations, from super-Eddington accretion to direct collapse and primordial black holes.
[8] Labbé, I., et al. (2023). “A population of red candidate massive galaxies ~600 Myr after the Big Bang.” Nature 616, 266–269. The “universe breakers”: the first reading of the red sources as impossibly massive galaxies.
[9] de Graaff, A., et al. (2025). “A remarkable Ruby: Absorption in dense gas, rather than evolved stars, drives the extreme Balmer break of a Little Red Dot at z = 3.5.” Astronomy & Astrophysics. arXiv:2503.16600. “The Cliff”. The origin of the black-hole-star reading: a dense, nearly spherical hydrogen envelope. Supports the meeting-phase reading of Step 6.
[10] Naidu, R. P., et al. (2025). “A ‘Black Hole Star’ Reveals the Remarkable Gas-Enshrouded Hearts of the Little Red Dots.” arXiv:2503.16596. MoM-BH*-1; independent support for a star-like envelope around an accreting black hole.
[11] Rusakov, V., Watson, D., et al. (2026). “Little red dots as young supermassive black holes in dense ionized cocoons.” Nature 649, 574–579. arXiv:2503.16595. Electron scattering broadens the lines; masses fall by about two orders of magnitude; weak X-ray and radio. Central to the reading of the red dots as the meeting phase.
[12] Sneppen, A., Watson, D., et al. (2026). “Inside the cocoon: a comprehensive explanation of the spectra of Little Red Dots.” arXiv:2601.18864. Radiative-transfer models reproduce the spectra without star-like atmospheres; predicted correlations confirmed; typical mass about a million solar masses.
[13] Begelman, M. C., Volonteri, M., & Rees, M. J. (2006). “Formation of supermassive black holes by direct collapse in pre-galactic haloes.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 370, 289–298. The original quasi-star: a black hole growing inside a massive gaseous envelope.
[14] Begelman, M. C., & Dexter, J. (2025). “Little Red Dots as Late-stage Quasi-stars.” arXiv:2507.09085. Applies the quasi-star model to the red dots.
[15] Nandal, D., & Loeb, A. (2025). “Supermassive Stars Match the Spectral Signatures of JWST’s Little Red Dots.” arXiv:2507.12618. The supermassive-star reading: no fully formed black hole yet.
[16] Inayoshi, K., & Maiolino, R. (2025). “Extremely dense gas around little red dots and high-redshift AGNs: a non-stellar origin of the Balmer break and absorption features.” The Astrophysical Journal Letters 980, L27. arXiv:2409.07805. Dense gas, not old stars, makes the Balmer break.
[17] Nemmen, R. (2026). “Mysterious ‘little red dots’ could be black holes in disguise.” Nature News & Views. Commentary on [11]; notes that mass estimates depend on how much ionised gas the cocoon holds.
[18] Quanta Magazine (2026). “Are the Little Red Dots Actually Black Hole Suns?” The Quanta Podcast, 22 September 2026. Background to the conference dispute described in [1].
The compression and its sources
[19] Konstapel, J. (2026). The Vacuum.Net Theory, Ninth Edition: Foundations 9.2 and Physics 9.0. Constable Research, Leiden. The formal statement used throughout. All theorem numbers (T1–T24, C1–C6, I1–I4, P1–P5, O1–O8) refer to it.
[20] Spencer-Brown, G. (1969). Laws of Form. Allen & Unwin. The mark of distinction and its re-entry: the ground of N1.
[21] Kauffman, L. H. (1987). “State models and the Jones polynomial.” Topology 26, 395–407. The bracket behind the chirality of the first knot (T20).
[22] Kauffman, L. H. (2005). “EigenForm.” Kybernetes 34, 129–150. The eigenform O(A) = A: the formal side of the closure rule N2 and of the fixed points in T10.
[23] Rowlands, P. (2007). Zero to Infinity: The Foundations of Physics. World Scientific. The nilpotent Dirac operator; read in the compression as closure (C3).
[24] Maxwell, J. C. (1873). A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. Clarendon Press, Vol. II, Arts. 591–619. Equations in quaternion form with one product and two readings; the moduli as properties of the medium.
[25] Williamson, J. G., & van der Mark, M. B. (1997). “Is the electron a photon with toroidal topology?” Annales de la Fondation Louis de Broglie 22, 133–160. The electron as light closed on itself (C4, I1).
[26] Larson, D. B. (1959). The Structure of the Physical Universe. North Pacific Publishers. Space and time as two aspects of one motion; the basis of reading everything as ratios.
[27] Chaitin, G. (2005). Meta Math! The Quest for Omega. Pantheon. A theory is a program shorter than its data: the measure by which a compression is judged.
[28] ‘t Hooft, G. (2016). The Cellular Automaton Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Springer. A deterministic rule beneath quantum behaviour: a kindred programme.
[29] Feynman, R. P. (1965). “The Development of the Space-Time View of Quantum Electrodynamics.” Nobel Lecture, 11 December 1965. Recounts Wheeler’s idea of a single electron running back and forth in time: kindred to “one strand” and “one electron”.
[30] Rosen, R. (1991). Life Itself. Columbia University Press. Closure under efficient causation: the question of which dynamics is its own fixed point.
Cosmology: the Big Bang
[31] Einstein, A. (1917). “Kosmologische Betrachtungen zur allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie.” Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 142–152. The first relativistic cosmology: static and spatially closed.
[32] Friedmann, A. (1922). “Über die Krümmung des Raumes.” Zeitschrift für Physik 10, 377–386. Expanding and contracting solutions.
[33] Lemaître, G. (1927). “Un univers homogène de masse constante et de rayon croissant.” Annales de la Société Scientifique de Bruxelles A47, 49–59. Links expansion to redshift.
[34] Hubble, E. (1929). “A relation between distance and radial velocity among extra-galactic nebulae.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 15, 168–173. Redshift grows with distance. Read in Step 2 as a count of scale steps.
[35] Penzias, A. A., & Wilson, R. W. (1965). “A Measurement of Excess Antenna Temperature at 4080 Mc/s.” The Astrophysical Journal 142, 419–421. Discovery of the background radiation.
[36] Guth, A. H. (1981). “Inflationary universe: A possible solution to the horizon and flatness problems.” Physical Review D 23, 347–356. Inflation as the standard answer to the uniformity of the background; the compression answers with closure.
[37] Planck Collaboration (2020). “Planck 2018 results. VI. Cosmological parameters.” Astronomy & Astrophysics 641, A6. arXiv:1807.06209. The precision fit of the standard model to the background fluctuations.
[38] Riess, A. G., et al. (1998). “Observational evidence from supernovae for an accelerating universe and a cosmological constant.” The Astrophysical Journal 116, 1009–1038. Discovery of accelerated expansion.
[39] Perlmutter, S., et al. (1999). “Measurements of Ω and Λ from 42 high-redshift supernovae.” The Astrophysical Journal 517, 565–586. Independent discovery of acceleration.
[40] DESI Collaboration (2025). “DESI DR2 Results II: Measurements of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations and Cosmological Constraints.” arXiv:2503.14738. Hints that dark energy weakens over time, at 2.8–4.2σ depending on the supernova sample.
Cosmology: infinite, eternal and closed universes
[41] Bondi, H., & Gold, T. (1948). “The Steady-State Theory of the Expanding Universe.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 108, 252–270. A universe without beginning, kept unchanged by continuous creation.
[42] Hoyle, F. (1948). “A New Model for the Expanding Universe.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 108, 372–382. The field-theoretic version of the steady state.
[43] Hoyle, F., Burbidge, G., & Narlikar, J. V. (1993). “A quasi-steady state cosmological model with creation of matter.” The Astrophysical Journal 410, 437–457. Steady state with cycles; an eternal universe with oscillations.
[44] Steinhardt, P. J., & Turok, N. (2002). “A Cyclic Model of the Universe.” Science 296, 1436–1439. Endless cycles replace one beginning; kindred to Step 1, but with an external time axis.
[45] Penrose, R. (2010). Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe. Bodley Head. Conformal cyclic cosmology: the end of one aeon is the start of the next.
[46] Ellis, G. F. R., & Brundrit, G. B. (1979). “Life in the infinite universe.” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 20, 37–41. An infinite universe repeats every finite configuration infinitely often.
[47] Harrison, E. R. (1987). Darkness at Night: A Riddle of the Universe. Harvard University Press. The history of Olbers’ paradox and what a dark night sky implies for an infinite universe.
[48] Luminet, J.-P., Weeks, J. R., Riazuelo, A., Lehoucq, R., & Uzan, J.-P. (2003). “Dodecahedral space topology as an explanation for weak wide-angle temperature correlations in the cosmic microwave background.” Nature 425, 593–595. arXiv:astro-ph/0310253. A finite, closed space as a real cosmological option; kindred to the closed strand.
[49] Lerner, E. J., Falomo, R., & Scarpa, R. (2014). “UV surface brightness of galaxies from the local universe to z ~ 5.” International Journal of Modern Physics D 23, 1450058. arXiv:1405.0275. Reads the Tolman test as support for a static universe.
[50] López-Corredoira, M. (2017). “Tests and problems of the standard model in cosmology.” Foundations of Physics 47, 711–768. A systematic list of tensions in the standard model, from a critic’s side.
Redshift and time dilation
[51] Zwicky, F. (1929). “On the red shift of spectral lines through interstellar space.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 15, 773–779. Tired light: energy loss without expansion. The compression differs because it changes all periods together.
[52] Goldhaber, G., et al. (2001). “Timescale stretch parameterization of type Ia supernova B-band light curves.” The Astrophysical Journal 558, 359–368. First clear measurement that distant supernovae run slower by 1 + z.
[53] White, R. M. T., et al. (2024). “The Dark Energy Survey Supernova Program: slow supernovae show cosmological time dilation out to z ~ 1.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 533, 3365. arXiv:2406.05050. The strongest current test; read in Step 2 as one count applied to all periods.
[54] Lubin, L. M., & Sandage, A. (2001). “The Tolman surface brightness test for the reality of the expansion. IV.” The Astronomical Journal 122, 1084–1103. Reads the Tolman test as support for expansion; the counterpart of [49].
The background radiation
[55] Mather, J. C., et al. (1994). “Measurement of the cosmic microwave background spectrum by the COBE FIRAS instrument.” The Astrophysical Journal 420, 439–444. The near-perfect blackbody shape.
[56] Fixsen, D. J. (2009). “The Temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background.” The Astrophysical Journal 707, 916–920. T₀ = 2.72548 K.
[57] Srianand, R., Petitjean, P., & Ledoux, C. (2000). “The cosmic microwave background radiation temperature at a redshift of 2.34.” Nature 408, 931–935. The background was warmer further away, as T₀(1 + z).
[58] Muller, S., et al. (2013). “A precise and accurate determination of the cosmic microwave background temperature at z = 0.89.” Astronomy & Astrophysics 551, A109. Confirms T₀(1 + z) with molecular thermometers.
[59] Eddington, A. S. (1926). The Internal Constitution of the Stars. Cambridge University Press. Estimates a “temperature of space” of 3.18 K from starlight: a few kelvin as the natural floor of a radiating universe.
The cosmic web and galaxies
[60] Zel’dovich, Ya. B. (1970). “Gravitational instability: An approximate theory for large density perturbations.” Astronomy & Astrophysics 5, 84–89. The “pancakes”: walls that collapse further. Read in Step 4 as the cells that never close.
[61] Bond, J. R., Kofman, L., & Pogosyan, D. (1996). “How filaments of galaxies are woven into the cosmic web.” Nature 380, 603–606. The web of filaments and nodes.
[62] Hahn, O., Porciani, C., Carollo, C. M., & Dekel, A. (2007). “Properties of dark matter haloes in clusters, filaments, sheets and voids.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 375, 489–499. The T-web: classification by the number of collapsing directions, 0 to 3. The direct counterpart of the trit cube.
[63] Cautun, M., van de Weygaert, R., Jones, B. J. T., & Frenk, C. S. (2014). “Evolution of the cosmic web.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 441, 2923–2973. arXiv:1401.7866. Voids take about 77 percent of the volume and less than 15 percent of the mass; clusters and filaments are the most prominent components.
[64] van de Weygaert, R. (2016). “Voids and the Cosmic Web: cosmic depressions & spatial complexity.” Proceedings IAU Symposium 308. arXiv:1611.01222. Review of voids and their role in the web.
[65] Milgrom, M. (1983). “A modification of the Newtonian dynamics as a possible alternative to the hidden mass hypothesis.” The Astrophysical Journal 270, 365–370. The acceleration scale a₀ and its closeness to cH₀/2π.
[66] McGaugh, S. S., Lelli, F., & Schombert, J. M. (2016). “Radial Acceleration Relation in Rotationally Supported Galaxies.” Physical Review Letters 117, 201101. arXiv:1609.05917. One relation between observed and baryonic acceleration across 153 galaxies.
[67] Lelli, F., McGaugh, S. S., & Schombert, J. M. (2016). “SPARC: Mass Models for 175 Disk Galaxies with Spitzer Photometry and Accurate Rotation Curves.” The Astronomical Journal 152, 157. The public data on which the a₀ statement can be checked.
Stars
[68] Eddington, A. S. (1920). “The internal constitution of the stars.” The Observatory 43, 341–358. Proposes hydrogen-to-helium conversion as the energy source of stars.
[69] Bethe, H. A. (1939). “Energy Production in Stars.” Physical Review 55, 434–456. The reaction chains.
[70] Burbidge, E. M., Burbidge, G. R., Fowler, W. A., & Hoyle, F. (1957). “Synthesis of the Elements in Stars.” Reviews of Modern Physics 29, 547–650. How stars build the heavier elements.
[71] Schwabe, H. (1844). “Sonnen-Beobachtungen im Jahre 1843.” Astronomische Nachrichten 21, 233–236. The sunspot cycle; read in Step 5 as the cycle of a ring that is not a fixed point.
Black holes
[72] Oppenheimer, J. R., & Snyder, H. (1939). “On Continued Gravitational Contraction.” Physical Review 56, 455–459. The first description of collapse to a black hole.
[73] Penrose, R. (1965). “Gravitational Collapse and Space-Time Singularities.” Physical Review Letters 14, 57–59. General relativity predicts a singularity; the compression reads the black hole as a closed winding instead.
[74] Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (2019). “First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. I. The Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole.” The Astrophysical Journal Letters 875, L1. arXiv:1906.11238. The ring of light: read in Step 6 as light from the seam.
[75] Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (2022). “First Sagittarius A Event Horizon Telescope Results. I.” The Astrophysical Journal Letters 930, L12.* The same picture for the black hole in our own Galaxy.
[76] Mazur, P. O., & Mottola, E. (2004). “Gravitational vacuum condensate stars.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 101, 9545–9548. arXiv:gr-qc/0407075. A compact object without singularity, in a different internal state: kindred to the closed winding.
[77] Bogdán, Á., et al. (2024). “Evidence for heavy-seed origin of early supermassive black holes from a z ≈ 10 X-ray quasar.” Nature Astronomy 8, 126–133. arXiv:2305.15458. UHZ1: a heavy black hole far along the path, and X-ray bright — an object in the ring phase, not the meeting phase.
The light elements
[78] Alpher, R. A., Bethe, H., & Gamow, G. (1948). “The Origin of Chemical Elements.” Physical Review 73, 803–804. The hot-start origin of the light elements; the first unpacking still open for the compression.