A hierarchy of cosmic compact objects - without black holes

Abstract

We make the case for the existence of a, hitherto unknown and unobserved, hierarchy of ever more compact cosmic objects in the universe. This hypothesis is based on i) the assumption of "elementary" particle sub-constituents on several levels below the presently known, inspired by Glashow's "blooming desert", ii) the existence of nearly scale-invariant density fluctuations in the early universe, e.g. as predicted by inflationary models, iii) our own previous theoretical work showing that a class of objects considerably more compact than previously thought possible in astrophysics can exist. We also give several independent arguments strongly pointing towards the non-existence of black holes. Some brief suggestions on observational signals due to the hierarchy, both in collected astronomical data and in possible future observations, concludes the paper.