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General relativity makes very specific predictions about what black holes are and how they should appear, as shown in this simulation. GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER/JEREMY SCHNITTMAN
After decades of effort, scientists are finally seeing black holes or are they?
Jan. 7, 2021 , 1:45 PM
While working on his doctorate in theoretical physics in the early 1970s, Saul Teukolsky solved a problem that seemed purely hypothetical. Imagine a black hole, the ghostly knot of gravity that forms when, say, a massive star burns out and collapses to an infinitesimal point. Suppose you perturb it, as you might strike a bell. How does the black hole respond?
Palo Alto, California – Whitney Dafoe’s day begins at 2:30pm. His father, Ron Davis, peeks through the keyhole into the 37-year-old’s room. Is he awake?
ABSOLUTELY NO ENTRY is scrawled in red on a handmade sign pinned to the door below a picture of the Dalai Lama. Davis has rushed home from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, to take the afternoon shift. When Whitney raises his left hand, fingers clenched to a fist, that’s Davis’s cue. Whitney is ready for his dad to change his urinal, put ice on his aching belly, and refill the IV-drip.
Scientists are edging closer to making a super-secure, super-fast quantum internet possible: they ve now been able to teleport high-fidelity quantum information over a total distance of 44 kilometres (27 miles).
It took into consideration factors such as the rate of formation of stars suitable for the development of life in surrounding planets and the number of planets per solar system.
However, as technology improves and understanding of the Universe grows, NASA and institutions such as the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Santiago High School, California, have updated how the chances are calculated.
The team has not provided a clear answer into what the chances are, but essentially added several factors to the Drake Equation.
One such factor which was not considered in 1961 is that species tend to find a way of killing themselves off.