Something Never Before Seen Passed Between Us and Another Galaxy
Credibility score: 57/100 — Mixed Credibility. Several questionable claims detected. Watch with healthy skepticism.
Claims analyzed
Star in Large Magellanic Cloud brightened for 1 hour in 2019, not a supernova — OK (60/100)
Event sounds real — spelling of the galaxy is the only red flag here
Phoebe event might help solve dark matter mystery — Opinion (50/100)
Speculative link — microlensing can detect compact objects but doesn't directly prove dark matter
Swinburne team used Dark Energy Camera to detect Phoebe via reanalysis — OK (65/100)
Institution name is off — it's Swinburne, not Swinburn. Details otherwise line up.
Object mass calculated at ~3 lunar masses or 1/30th Earth mass — Solid (75/100)
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First exoplanet found in the Large Magellanic Cloud — Dubious (35/100)
Misnames the galaxy — it's Magellanic, not 'melanic' — and the actual candidate is still unconfirmed.
Sources: A Mysterious Object Passed in Front of a Distant Star for One Hour, and It May Be a Primordial Black Hole, Something just passed between us and a distant star, First Evidence of a Planet Identified Beyond Our Galaxy - NASA Science
Team searched for primordial black holes in Andromeda ~5 years ago — OK (55/100)
Timing is roughly right but no specific team or result named — hard to verify.
Hawking proposed primordial black holes as dark matter — Solid (75/100)
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Hawking proposed Phoebe as dark matter object 100,000x likelier than star — Dubious (45/100)
Hawking link feels retrofitted — 1970s work didn't mention Phoebe or LMC events.
2022 Hubble found first isolated stellar-mass black hole — Solid (85/100)
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Last year confirmed isolated Saturn-mass rogue planet — OK (60/100)
Timing vague — multiple rogue planet candidates but no single 2025 Saturn-mass confirmation dominates.
Parallax from Earth and Gaia gave precise location of the object — OK (65/100)
Parallax method is real but Gaia-to-Earth baseline is only ~1.5M km, not 'millions of km apart' in the dramatic sense — wording oversells it
Phoebe is a rogue planet ejected by dynamical interactions, like one possibly ejected from our solar system — Dubious (40/100)
Rogue planet ejection is plausible but the solar-system comparison is speculative with no supporting evidence cited
Phoebe has the highest statistical chance of being a primordial black hole, supporting dark matter as primordial black holes — Sketchy (25/100)
No published study shows Phoebe is the top primordial-black-hole candidate — this appears to be overstated speculation
A 3-lunar-mass black hole would be only 6 mm across — Solid (80/100)
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Subaru telescope found similar unconfirmed microlensing candidates in Andromeda — Dubious (35/100)
No public Subaru results on Andromeda microlensing candidates matching this description are cited or linked
Lunar-mass objects in Andromeda could be dark matter — Dubious (45/100)
Big leap from one event to entire populations — no confirmation yet.
Microlensing events won't repeat for up to a million years — OK (65/100)
Correct in principle — orbital dynamics make repeats extremely rare.
Roman and Veruin telescopes will detect thousands of microlensing events — Solid (75/100)
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We won't know more until future observations — Opinion (50/100)
Safe hedge — science moves on data, not speculation.
See the full analysis with sources and timestamps →