I don't understand their confusion
In an "explosion" the size of the big bang, a lot of matter would have been squeezed out, fallen back in, squeezed out again etc, creating a slower moving "soup", some of which would have coalesced in to "normal" matter, some in to black holes. Therefore some black holes must have been created at the start of the universe (if the big bang theory is to be followed). But this isn't news, either - people have long suspected black holes to form the centres of galaxies, as something pretty massive is required to produce the gravity required to hold a galaxy together. And there are a lot of galaxies.
But, if a black hole can "explode", or rather if its rate of "creation" or "ejection" of matter/energy is proportional to its mass and eventually become equal to the amount of energy/matter consumed, then why wouldn't a black hole reach "critical mass" before it had swallowed the whole universe?
This is just the "multiple mini bang" theory over again.
/serious perplexed rant
(, Tue 10 May 2011, 14:16, Reply)
I agree that black holes could have been created at the start of the universe, I think what the paper is arguing is that even if the universe is cycling through big bang/big crunch that some black holes from a previous cycle could somehow survive through a big bang and therefore be older than the rest of the universe.
(, Tue 10 May 2011, 14:31, Reply)