{"id":686858,"date":"2026-05-22T18:17:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T18:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/686858\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T18:17:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T18:17:17","slug":"a-strange-black-hole-mystery-has-stumped-physicists-since-1993-researchers-may-finally-have-the-answer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/686858\/","title":{"rendered":"A Strange Black Hole Mystery Has Stumped Physicists Since 1993. Researchers May Finally Have the Answer"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1993, Canadian physicist Matthew Choptuik demonstrated<\/a> black holes may emerge spontaneously from critical collapse<\/a>, during which spacetime curvatures organize themselves into a defined, repeating crystal-like pattern. But researchers weren\u2019t quite able to describe this nicely in formulaic language\u2014until now.<\/p>\n

A team of theoretical physicists say it\u2019s found the long-sought formula for how spacetime crystals could collapse into black holes, reporting its work in a recent Physical Review Letters<\/a> paper. To be clear, the heavily mathematical study will need further testing via empirical investigations. But the theoretical results, nevertheless, offer astronomers more precise parameters for exploring a fascinating alternative for how black holes emerged, particularly in the universe\u2019s earliest days.<\/p>\n

\u201cDepending on the desired precision, we can systematically improve our formulas using additional approximation methods,\u201d Florian Ecker, the study\u2019s co-author and a theoretical physicist at TU Wien in Austria, said in a statement<\/a>. \u201cThis gives us a new method for studying black-hole-related phenomena that could previously not be analyzed analytically.\u201d<\/p>\n

Small ripples, big consequences \"AAn example of gravitational lensing producing an Einstein Ring (and a smiley face) around galaxy cluster SDSS J1038+4849. Credit: NASA\/ESA <\/p>\n

Albert Einstein\u2019s general relativity<\/a> views gravity as the curvature of spacetime. As one of the most successful theories in physics, this idea has been confirmed observation after observation, particularly through faraway, massive objects that only make themselves visible to us via gravitational lensing<\/a>, which warps and magnifies their light.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut smaller masses also produce spacetime curvature, just to a lesser extent,\u201d Christian Ecker, the study\u2019s first author and a theoretical physicist at Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany, said in the release.<\/p>\n

And in physics, the tiniest shifts can trigger huge changes, added Daniel Grumiller, the study\u2019s co-author and a theoretical physicist at TU Wien. For instance, the slightest change in temperature can push disordered water molecules to organize into crystalline ice structures at 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius).<\/p>\n

Critical collapse! <\/p>\n

Similarly, relatively small relativistic effects allow relatively smaller objects to trigger the reorganization of spacetime curvature. According to Choptuik\u2019s 1993 simulations, spacetime falls into a repeating pattern\u2014a kind of spacetime crystal\u2014and the process leading to this state is referred to as critical collapse. According to the statement, these states are believed to have existed shortly after the Big Bang, meaning spacetime crystals could even be responsible for primordial black holes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis spacetime crystal is a very peculiar and fascinating object,\u201d Grumiller said. \u201cIt is a kind of intermediate state, an unstable point that can evolve in two different directions.\u201d<\/p>\n

That could mean the crystal could simply dissolve. But a tiny drop of energy could set off something entirely different\u2014the formation of a black hole, he added. That story is quite the deviation from typical origin stories for black holes, which most often emerge from \u201cspectacular\u201d events like supernovas.<\/p>\n

Bringing theory to life <\/p>\n

Theoretically speaking, however, arbitrarily small black holes can exist. The team behind the latest research bet on this possibility, entertaining a multi-dimensional approach \u201cencoded in a single function of time,\u201d according to the paper. When applied to critical collapse structures, the researchers found their solution nicely provided \u201csystematic analytic control\u201d of a hypothesis physicists long struggled to describe mathematically.<\/p>\n

For now, everything is in the realm of theory. The team expressed in the statement that from here, the goal is to translate its solutions to a smaller number of dimensions that better reflect the observable universe. For all we\u2019ve learned about black holes, there\u2019s arguable more that we don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

So again, we\u2019ll have to see if astrophysicists decide to give the new framework a try. But if the framework really can empirically confirm Choptuik\u2019s conjecture\u2014that some black holes emerge from more \u201ctame\u201d conditions\u2014that\u2019d be huge for black hole astronomy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 1993, Canadian physicist Matthew Choptuik demonstrated black holes may emerge spontaneously from critical collapse, during which spacetime…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":686859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[3508,2035,49,48,43886,66],"class_list":["post-686858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-astrophysics","tag-black-holes","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-general-relativity","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/686859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}