On: A Sun-like star orbiting a boson star

[jwuphysics]

> What makes you think their proposal isn't more likely than a black hole?

Because a boson star is purely theoretical and I have a much stronger observational prior that the object is a black hole.

[bookofjoe → jwuphysics]

Once upon a time black holes were purely theoretical.

See, for example:

>The Country Parson Who Conceived of Black Holes [in 1783]

https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/cosm....

>A Brief History of Black Holes

https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/cosm....

>At a conference in New York in 1967, Dr. Wheeler, seizing on a suggestion shouted from the audience, hit on the name “black hole” to dramatize this dire possibility for a star and for physics.

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/science/14wheeler.html#:~....

[The_Colonel → bookofjoe]

Survivorship bias. Aether was once also a theory which "just" needed an experimental evidence.