Regarding your story titled 'Counting up the Active Black Holes with Chandra', I read this and thought immediately of something else.

Champagne bubbles.

The gas forms around tiny imperfections in the glass causing the gas to collect until enough has gathered for it to drift off.

I am thinking that this might be the way things have formed in the universe. Could the universe been made of some object that collapsed to form a black hole and then this cause particles to collect to form the galaxies?
What do you think?

Dave
Devon
UK

Welcome to BAUT, bluegruntfuttock!

If you take a sufficiently broad interpretation of "forms around tiny imperfections", then this is the explanation of one aspect of the cosmic (microwave) background radiation (CMB), as observed by missions such as WMAP - inflation blows up random quantum fluctuations, leaving a characteristic 'message' across the sky ...

As to the formation of the universe, well, the challenge in getting a handle on even the most general class of phenomena that could be described as you have, in the above post, is that there is no (tested, consistent) theory which incorporates both gravity and quantum phenomena ...