General relativity

A team of physicists mathematically built an exotic object that they believe could look like a black hole to Earth-based observers but is actually a star. First Full-Color Images From Webb Space TelescopeThe star is a topological soliton: a smooth, stable, albeit theoretical object. (Skyrmions are another type of topological soliton.) In this case, the vexingly complicated mathematics undergirding the hypothetical object show that it would distort space like a black hole, an object whose gravitational field is so intense…

If you thought entangling qubits using the Fibonacci sequence was confusing, you’d better hold onto something. A team of physicists recently found that quantum systems can imitate wormholes, theorized shortcuts in spacetime, in that the systems allow the instantaneous transit of information between remote locations.The research team thinks their findings could have implications for probing quantum gravity—the catch-all term used to marry quantum mechanics and Newtonian gravity, which doesn’t affect quantum particles the…

Scientists have discovered a relatively small black hole lurking next to a star in the constellation Ophiuchus, about 1,600 light-years away. It’s now the closest-known back hole to Earth.Black holes are the densest objects in our universe (sorry, neutron stars). Whether they’re small, stellar-mass black holes or the supermassive ones atthe centers of galaxies, the objects have gravitational fields so intense that not even photons of light can escape their event horizons. The recently discovered black hole—named Gaia…