Stephen Hawking thought black holes were 'hairy'. New study suggests he was right.

The outer edges of a black hole might be "fuzzy" instead of neat and smooth.

NASA
  • A recent study analyzed observations of gravitational waves, first observed in 2015.
  • The data suggests, according to the researchers, that black holes aren't bounded by smooth event horizons, but rather by a sort of quantum fuzz, which would fit with the idea of Hawking radiation.
  • If confirmed, the findings could help scientists better understand how general relativity fits with quantum mechanics.
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Michio Kaku: 5 fascinating moments from this 1991 interview

From talking about Schrödinger's cat to nuking the South Pole, this decades-old interview shows why Kaku was born to be a science educator.

Harold Channer
  • Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist and renowned science communicator.
  • In 1991, he sat down for an hour-long interview in which he discussed climate change, nuclear weapons, human evolution, and more.
  • Kaku is a regular contributor to Big Think.
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Is panpsychism accurate? Modern physics delivers a reality check.

If philosophers don't try to mesh their long-held views with new scientific insights, then we have a problem.

  • According to panpsychists, all of reality is infused with experience. In other words, the fundamental ingredient of reality, they believe, has the felt quality of experience in it.
  • In this view, the reason that we humans are conscious is that we're configured based on these fundamental experiential ingredients.
  • If philosophers don't try to mesh their long-held views with what we're discovering from good science, then we have a problem. For instance, panpsychism may be due for an update: panprotopsychism, a view that says as these fundamental ingredients combine, they give rise to conscious experience and that those fundamental ingredients are "quasimental."
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Are scientists on the brink of discovering a mirror universe?

New experiments look to the interplay between neutrons and magnetic fields to observe our universal reflection.

Photo credit: Jovis Aloor on Unsplash
  • Science fiction has long speculated about parallel universes and what they may be like.
  • Researchers have devised new experiments to look for how a mirror universe may be influencing our own.
  • If such evidence is found, it could bring to light many of the universe's mysteries, such as the nature of dark matter.
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Radical theory says our universe sits on an inflating bubble in an extra dimension

Cosmologists propose a groundbreaking model of the universe using string theory.

Getty Images/Suvendu Giri
  • A new paper uses string theory to propose a new model of the universe.
  • The researchers think our universe may be riding a bubble expanded by dark energy.
  • All matter in the universe may exist in strings that reach into another dimension.
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