Hidey Holes

The cover story of the last issue of New Scientist talks about the last place you'd expect to find a black hole. Yet another story about higher dimensions at the LHC? No, as the first paragraph states:

As the outside of the star finally cools, like a dying ember, its outer layers are suddenly blown away into space. And there, uncloaked for the first time, is a monstrous black hole.

The article, based on this recent paper, discusses the work of the University of Colorado's Mitchell Begelman and colleagues (but of course not Louise Riofrio). Referring to the conservative star formation mechanisms discussed in the paper, Fulvio Melia from the University of Arizona says:

With these mechanisms, something unusual - even dramatic - has to happen to make them work. Somehow this has to happen in a matter of only a few hundred million years, whereas simulations with standard physics show that it should take billions.

Perhaps something else is going on here.