Proto Well

A Proto Well is a collapse formed in the data before the physical layer, at the Data Nova where the data lies densest: the deepest place of the Data Matter, the seed of a halo, and at the Physical Nova a site, where the gas will gather, where the first stars will light, and where a well will be born. A Proto Well is not a well. No black hole has been seen to form except by collapse, so the Proto Well is the data's prediction of where the wells of matter will form, as the peaks of the early density field are where halos collapse in standard cosmology (Bardeen, Bond, Kaiser & Szalay, 1986). The Proto Wells are the first wells of Data Matter, the seeds of the halos every galaxy sits in (Navarro, Frenk & White, 1996), and the sites where their central wells will be born (Part 3.14, Proto Wells: Where Wells Will Form). A well is born at a site in one of two ways: by direct collapse, early, when the conditions for it hold together (reviewed by Woods et al., 2019), the site deep enough that gas falling in is heated to where atomic hydrogen radiates, T_vir ≥ 10⁴ K, and its gas pristine, with metals below about 10⁻⁵ of the Sun's; or later, when its first dying star sinks to its heart. Every collapse meets the Reproductive Outcome Distribution: the fraction P⦰ that fails returns its basin to the Source before the Physical Nova, which sets a universe's ratio of dark matter to ordinary matter (Data Matter Count with Failed Proto Wells). The prediction is scored by the Site Lift: wells, and the galaxies round them, should form where the Proto Wells stood, far more often than chance. In the simulation, after the Physical Nova a site is not counted, drawn, ranked or shining; what the player sees is what a site does. It connects to Data Matter, Data Nova, Physical Nova, Site Lift, Data Matter Count with Failed Proto Wells, Reproductive Outcome Distribution and Virial Temperature.