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Black holes are some of the most enigmatic objects in the universe, capable of deforming the fabric of space around them so violently that not even light can escape their gravitational grip. But it turns out, much of what scientists know about these mysterious objects could be wrong.

According to new research, published in April in the journal Physical Review D, black holes could actually be entirely different celestial entities known as gravastars.

"Gravastars are hypothetical astronomical objects that were introduced [in 2001] as alternatives to black holes," study co-author Joo Lus Rosa, a professor of physics at the University of Gdask in Poland, told Live Science in an email. "They can be interpreted as stars made of vacuum energy or dark energy: the same type of energy that propels the accelerated expansion of the universe."

Karl Schwarzschild, a German physicist and astronomer, first predicted black holes in 1915, based on calculations using Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity.

Over the years, astronomical observations have seemingly confirmed the existence of objects resembling black holes. However, Schwarzschild's description of these space bodies has some shortcomings.

In particular, the center of a black hole is predicted to be a point of infinitely high density, called a singularity, where all the mass of the black hole is concentrated, but fundamental physics teaches us that infinities do not exist, and their appearance in any theory signals its inaccuracy or incompleteness.

"These problems indicate that something is either wrong or incomplete in the black hole model, and that the development of alternative models is necessary," Rosa said. "The gravastar is one of many alternative models proposed. The main advantage of gravastars is that they do not have singularities."

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Like ordinary black holes, gravastars should arise at the final stage of the evolution of massive stars, when the energy released during thermonuclear combustion of the matter inside them is no longer enough to overcome the force of gravity, and the star collapses into a much denser object. But in contrast to black holes, gravastars are not expected to have any singularities and are thought to be thin spheres of matter whose stability is maintained by the dark energy contained within them.

To find out if gravastars are viable alternatives to singular black holes, Rosa and his colleagues examined the interaction of particles and radiation with these hypothetical objects.

Using Einstein's theory, the authors examined how the huge masses of hot matter that surround supermassive black holes would appear if these black holes were actually gravastars. They also scrutinized the properties of "hot spots" gigantic gas bubbles orbiting black holes at near-light speeds.

Their findings revealed striking similarities between the matter emissions of gravastars and black holes, suggesting that gravastars don't contradict scientists' experimental observations of the universe. Moreover, the team discovered that a gravastar itself should appear almost like a singular black hole, creating a visible shadow.

"This shadow is not caused by the trapping of light in the event horizon, but by a slightly different phenomenon called the 'gravitational redshift,' causing light to lose energy when it moves through a region with a strong gravitational field," Rosa said. "Indeed, when the light emitted from regions close to these alternative objects reach[es] our telescopes, most of its energy would have been lost to the gravitational field, causing the appearance of this shadow."

The striking resemblances between Schwarzschild's black hole model and gravastars highlight the latter's potential as a realistic alternative, free from the theoretical pitfalls of singularities.

However, this theory needs to be backed up with experiments and observations, which the study authors believe may soon be carried out. While gravastars and singular black holes might behave similarly in many respects, subtle differences in emitted light could potentially distinguish them.

"To test our results experimentally, we are counting on the next generation of observational experiments in gravitational physics," Rosa said, referring to the black hole-hunting Event Horizon Telescope and the GRAVITY+ instrument being added to the Very Large Telescope in Chile. "These two experiments aim to observe closely what happens near the center of galaxies, in particular, our own Milky Way."

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Black hole singularities defy physics. New research could finally do away with them. - Space.com

Pocket-Sized AI Models Could Unlock a New Era of Computing Will Knight | Wired When ChatGPT was released in November 2023, it could only be accessed through the cloud because the model behind it was downright enormous. Today I am running a similarly capable AI program on a Macbook Air, and it isnt even warm. The shrinkage shows how rapidly researchers are refining AI models to make them leaner and more efficient. It also shows how going to ever larger scales isnt the only way to make machines significantly smarter.

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Google Promised a Better Search ExperienceNow Its Telling Us to Put Glue on Our Pizza Kylie Robison | The Verge This is just one of many mistakes cropping up in the new feature that Google rolled out broadly this month. It also claims that former US President James Madison graduated from the University of Wisconsinnot once but 21 times,that a dog has played in the NBA, NFL, and NHL, and thatBatman is a cop. Look, Google didnt promise this would be perfect, and it even slaps a Generative AI is experimental label at the bottom of the AI answers. But its clear these tools arent ready to accurately provide information at scale.

Gene Therapy Repairs Spinal Discs to Relieve Back Pain Michael Irving | New Atlas Assessed over 12 weeks, injured mice that received the gene therapy were found to have a host of improvements compared to injured mice given plain saline injections. The tissue in the discs was found to produce more proteins that strengthen the tissue, and help it hold water. That helped them plump back up and act more like cushions again, improving the spines range of motion, load bearing and flexibility. While you cant exactly ask mice how much pain theyre feeling, behavioral tests suggested symptoms were reduced.

On Self-Driving, Waymo Is Playing Chess While Tesla Plays Checkers Timothy B. Lee | Ars Technica Many Tesla fans see [limitations like remote operators and avoiding freeways] as signs that Waymo is headed for a technological dead end. But I predict that when Tesla begins its driverless transition, it will realize that safety requires a Waymo-style incremental rollout. So Tesla hasnt found a different, better way to bring driverless technology to market. Waymo is just so far ahead that its dealing with challenges Tesla hasnt even started thinking about. Waymo is playing chess while Tesla is still playing checkers.

A Warp Drive Breakthrough Inches a Tiny Bit Closer toStar Trek Paul Sutter | Wired A team of physicists has discovered that its possible to build a real, actual,physical warp driveand not break any known rules ofphysics. One caveat: The vessel doing the warping cant exceed the speed of light, so youre not going to get anywhere interesting anytime soon. But this research still represents an important advance in our understanding ofgravity.

Media Companies Are Making a Huge Mistake With AI Jessica Lessin | The Atlantic For as long as I have reported on internet companies, I have watched news leaders try to bend their businesses to the will of Apple, Google, Meta, and more. Chasing techs distribution and cash, news firms strike deals to try to ride out the next digital wave. They make concessions to platforms that attempt to take all of the audience (and trust) that great journalism attracts, without ever having to do the complicated and expensive work of the journalism itself. And it never, ever works as planned.

ChatGPT, Explained Sheena Vasani | The Verge Some writers have declared thatthe debutof ChatGPT on November 30th, 2022, marked the beginning of a new chapter in history akin to theEnlightenmentand theIndustrial Revolution.Others have been more skeptical, wondering if this is just another overhyped tech, likeblockchainor themetaverse. What history will call ChatGPT remains to be seen, but heres one thing I do know for sure: nobody has shut up about it since. Thats why we decided to throw together this explainer so we can cut through all the BS together. You ready?Lets begin.

OpenAI Should Have Gone Way Beyond Scarlett Johansson Ross Andersen | The Atlantic Now that we can actually talk with a computer, we should be dreaming up wholly new ways to do it. Lets hope that someoneinside or outside of OpenAIstarts giving us a sense of what those ways might be. The weirder, the better. They may not even be modeled after existing human relationships. They may take on entirely different forms.

Nvidias Business Is Booming. Heres What Could Slow It Down. Asa Fitch | The Wall Street Journal Nvidiais riding high after anotherquarter of blockbuster sales and earnings, even as threats are emerging that could weaken the companys position at the center of the artificial-intelligence boom. Rivals and key customers are looking to produce chips that can close the gap with Nvidias products. Meanwhile, the AI market, which has proven tricky for some startups, is shifting in ways that could diminish the popularity of Nvidias chips.

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This Week's Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through May 25) - Singularity Hub

Melanie Reid was 52 years old when she hopped onto her horse, fell, and broke her neck. The resulting injury paralyzed her body below the chest area. Fourteen years later and after extensive physical therapy, she has gradually regained some function in her right handa lifeline, she said in a press conference. But her left hand remained useless.

As a journalist, the injury was devasting as she couldnt type. Even seemingly simple everyday routinestying her hair up into a ponytail, using an ATM card, or even unwrapping candywere a struggle.

With the help of a new device, shes able to do all that after just two months of use. Called ARC-EX therapy, the device zaps residual neural connections around the site of spinal cord injuries. Combined with physical rehabilitation, the treatment restored some functionality in her left handeven when the stimulation was turned off.

Reid was part of a 60-participant clinical trial that looked to use spinal cord stimulation to regain control of both hands. Similar treatments have shown promise in paraplegic patients, restoring the ability to walk in just a day. But those required surgery to place electrodes on the spinal cord.

ARC-EX therapy, by contrast, delivers two different types of electrical pulses through the skinno surgery required. Developed by Grgoire Courtine and colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, the device improved hand strength, pinch, and other movements in 72 percent of participants.

Because the device is non-invasive, its a simple addition to physical rehabilitation programsa sort of pilates for the fingers, explained the team. The trial only included two months of stimulation, and extending the timeline could potentially further improve results.

The stimulation only helps with finger and hand dexterity, not walking. But to Reid, thats what matters. Everyone thinks that [with] spinal injury all you want to do is to be able to walk again, she said. But what matters most is working hands[and] the gains can be life-changing.

All participants in the trial had a fracture in their spinal cord, roughly at the level of the neck.

With torn nerves, the brain can no longer command the body. Like a broken phone line, when you think move your hand, the signal gets lost at the break. Scientists have long tried to bridge this communication gap with electrodes to control muscle movement, essentially replacing broken biological wires with artificial ones.

Spinal cord stimulation is one solution. In 2018, a man walked across an entire football field years after he was paralyzed thanks to zaps to his spinal cord. With just a days stimulation, people with complete paralysis have been able to stroll around a busy downtown and go kayaking.

The key to recovery, explained the team, is to target living nerves. In a majority of cases, even patients deemed to have a complete spinal cord injury still have nerves left, and stimulating them can trigger regrowth and connections.

Picture the spinal cord as a tree, with branches reaching towards the skin. Now, imagine if the trunk was partially severed. By zapping the skin around the injury site, its possible to transmit electrical signals to the injured spinal cord trunk and allow living neurons near the injury site to rebuild neural connections.

In preclinical models, when applying stimulation, we immediately facilitated movement, said Courtine. But even more importantly, we saw new neuron growth, as if the body was repairing the broken neural system, he added. With sufficient healing, patients could potentially be able to use their hands even without stimulation.

Based on these ideas, the team built the ARC-EX device.

The clinical trial included 60 people with neck-level spinal cord injury. All participants underwent two months of physical therapy, followed by another two months of physical therapy combined with ARC-EX stimulation. The group was roughly 46 years old on average.

For physical rehab, each person practiced movements such as pinching, grasping, or moving the whole arm for an hour each day, up to five times a week. Although the therapy improved arm and hand function, progress plateaued for most patients.

The team then added ARC-EX stimulation, with the electrodes placed above and below the site of injury. During therapy, the team controlled the frequency and strength of the zaps, so it facilitated arm and hand movements without causing any unwanted muscle jerking.

The trial was open label, meaning both participants and researchers know theyre receiving stimulation. This can be risky business because of the placebo effectwhen participants recover because they think theyre getting the actual treatment, rather than, say, sham stimulation. However, with ARC-EX its impossible to blind the stimulation. Turning the device on immediately causes strange sensations in the participants, with the electrical pulses feeling like a sort of a buzz, said Reid. Turning the device off also immediately alerted participants. In one example, Reid said she was holding a jar with weights with the stimulation on, but with the stimulation offunbeknownst to hershe immediately dropped the jar.

In just eight weeks, 72 percent of participants met or exceeded goals for hand strength and dexteritythe ability to grab a mug or pinch a tweezeras assessed with a battery of tests. Only one person experienced unintended effectsuncontrollable muscle spasms. However, because stimulation was off when they occurred, the team says its likely not related to ARC-EX.

The therapy didnt just improve hand function. The paralyzed participants also felt less pain, had fewer struggles with breathing, and slept better.

The stimulation wont work for the roughly 10 percent of people with spinal cord injuries that completely severed all neural connections. But for those who still have residual nerve endings, it makes restoring finger movements easier.

Sherown Campbell, another participant in the trial, said ARC-EX is a life-changer. A self-proclaimed tech geek, he constantly works on his computer. Focusing on hand function was the biggest thing I was hoping to improve, he said.

With ARC-EX therapy, his typing speed increased from 25 words per minute to 33 words per minute, about a 30 percent increase, which is really significant for me, he said. But more importantly, his quality of life improved. He can cook and write againtwo seemingly simple everyday activities that give him joy but were robbed by his accident.

With the success of this trial, the device may hit the market soon. Because its non-invasive, it can easily be integrated into existing physical therapy sessions. The team is already looking for approval in the United States, with discussions with the European Union soon to follow. For now, the price is unknown, although Courtine said the aim is to make it widely accessible.

To Reid, being able to use her left hand is an enormous change to her life. Its extraordinary, she said. It makes you hold your head up and look at the world differently.

Image Credit: ONWARD Medical N.V.

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This Device Zaps the Spinal Cord to Give Paralyzed People Use of Their Hands Again - Singularity Hub

This column was originally going to be a recap of some of the technology I saw on display at NAB Show 2024 earlier this month. But as Ive been spending much of my free time since returning helping to care for my mother as she recovers from surgery, Ive also been thinking a bit more about the over-arching concept driving much of the technological innovation in the radio space right now.

For those that have never been to NAB, it is multiple events in one. There is the show floor, theres the engineering conferences, the sales conferences, the executive meetings, plus other events piggybacking on it such as Broadcast Education Association. Really it has something for every facet of the broadcast community, except for audio content creators, but even there was an attempt at improving those events this year.

What did generate much of my attention was a number of new or recently emerging players into the radio broadcast tech sphere especially on the end-user side. New cloud based playout systems, embedding of AI tech, and the moving of the playout tech from the studio to the transmitter site were seen across the floor of the show.

We are headed towards one do-all application/appliance for broadcasting. Super Hi-Fis partnership with Orban to place programming, processing, PPM encoding, stream encoding, and metadata in one box is just the start. Soon all of those features could be included in a transmitter along with access to cloud based music scheduling and voicetracking allowing one device to power nearly all of a radio stations necessary functions.

Other companies are doing the same. From Radio.cloud to internal systems like iHeartMedias Sound+, the shift to an all-in one combination of application and appliance is only going to continue. It will lead to an improved product as workflows are simplified to allow access to all relevant content in one place. AI generated auto-segueing of songs is already happening. Over time these platforms and others will include your board/faders, allow for any audio clip or song needed to be dropped in on the fly, auto-produce podcasts and on-demand audio clips and publish them to the station website, and allow for customization on the fly in ways that would still take hours of production time today.

These are the AI capabilities that radio can and should get behind as it will enable talent to better utilize their time and resources. While still being used as a novelty more than anything at this point, it is the continued growth of AI voices in on-air shifts that still is worrisome, but the fact it has not caught on in a major use is still a good sign for human voices.

But it will also enable simplicity.

One of the other major topics of discussion at and around NAB was in regards to how stations are going to solve the looming engineering crisis. Many operators, including those in larger markets such as Las Vegas, are down to relying on over-worked contract engineers at or nearing retirement age. A CEO asked us point-blank, What do I have to do to train and retain a single engineer? Having less technology to have to maintain will be a great start, especially since training will become easier. There will always be a demand for RF engineers, but radio needs to find IT capable people for studios and a combined infrastructure will make that much easier in helping to teach and learn broadcast IT.

The ability for future innovation built around a broadcast architecture that encompasses everything will only accelerate. Were already at the point where talent can broadcast from anywhere in the world just by clicking an icon in an app. Soon it may also provide web and social media content on the fly, podcasts published within seconds of content airing live, and dynamic customized broadcasts specifically for each listener truly making radio a one to one service in addition to the one to many offering it has always provided. A singular hardware/software solution creating a truly singular proposition.

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Converging Towards The Radio Singularity - RadioInsight - RadioInsight

Metas Open Source Llama 3 Is Already Nipping at OpenAIs Heels Will Knight | Wired OpenAI changed the world with ChatGPT, setting off a wave of AI investment and drawing more than 2 million developers to its cloud APIs. But if open source models prove competitive, developers and entrepreneurs may decide to stop paying to access the latest model from OpenAI or Google and use Llama 3 or one of the other increasingly powerful open source models that are popping up.

Real Hope for Cancer Cure as Personal mRNA Vaccine for Melanoma Trialed Andrew Gregory | The Guardian Experts are testing new jabs that are custom-built for each patient and tell their body to hunt down cancer cells to prevent the disease ever coming back. A phase 2 trial found the vaccines dramatically reduced the risk of the cancer returning in melanoma patients. Now a final, phase 3, trial has been launched and is being led by University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH). Dr Heather Shaw, the national coordinating investigator for the trial, said the jabs had the potential to cure people with melanoma and are being tested in other cancers, including lung, bladder and kidney.

An AI Startup Made a Hyperrealistic Deepfake of Me Thats So Good Its Scary Melissa Heikkil | MIT Technology Review Until now, all AI-generated videos of people have tended to have some stiffness, glitchiness, or other unnatural elements that make them pretty easy to differentiate from reality. Because theyre so close to the real thing butnot quiteit, these videos can make people feel annoyed or uneasy or ickya phenomenon commonly known as the uncanny valley. Synthesia claims its new technology will finally lead us out of the valley.

Nuclear Fusion Experiment Overcomes Two Key Operating Hurdles Matthew Sparkes | New Scientist A nuclear fusion reaction has overcome two key barriers to operating in a sweet spot needed for optimal power production: boosting the plasma density and keeping that denser plasma contained. The milestone is yet another stepping stone towards fusion power, although a commercial reactor is still probably years away.

Daniel Dennett: Why Civilization Is More Fragile Than We Realized Tom Chatfield | BBC [Dennetts]warning was not of a takeover by some superintelligence, but of a threat he believed that nonetheless could be existential for civilization, rooted in the vulnerabilities of human nature. If we turn this wonderful technology we have for knowledge into a weapon for disinformation, he told me, we are in deep trouble. Why? Because we wont know what we know, and we wont know who to trust, and we wont know whether were informed or misinformed. We may become either paranoid and hyper-skeptical, or just apathetic and unmoved. Both of those are very dangerous avenues. And theyre upon us.'

California Just Went 9.25 Hours Using Only Renewable Energy Adele Peters | Fast Company Last Saturday, as 39 million Californians went about their daily livestaking showers, doing laundry, or charging their electric carsthe whole state ran on 100% clean electricity for more than nine hours. The same thing happened on Sunday, as the state was powered without fossil fuels for more than eight hours. It was the ninth straight day that solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal, and battery storage fully powered the electric grid for at least some portion of the time. Over the last six and a half weeks, thats happened nearly every day. In some cases, its just for 15 minutes. But often its for hours at a time.

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AI Hype Is Deflating. Can AI Companies Find a Way to Turn a Profit? Gerrit De Vynck | The Washington Post Some once-promising start-ups have cratered, and the suite of flashy products launched by the biggest players in the AI raceOpenAI, Microsoft, Google and Metahave yet to upend the way people work and communicate with one another. While money keeps pouring into AI, very few companies are turning a profit on the tech, which remains hugely expensive to build and run. The road to widespread adoption and business success is still looking long, twisty and full of roadblocks, say tech executives, technologists and financial analysts.

Apple Releases Eight Small AI Language Models Aimed at On-Device Use Benj Edwards | Ars Technica In the world of AI, what might be called small language models have been growing in popularity recently because they can be run on a local device instead of requiring data center-grade computers in the cloud. On Wednesday, Appleintroduced a set of tiny source-available AI language models called OpenELM that are small enough to run directly on a smartphone. Theyre mostly proof-of-concept research models for now, but they could form the basis of future on-device AI offerings from Apple.

If Starship Is Real, Were Going to Need Big Cargo Movers on the Moon and Mars Eric Berger | Ars Technica Unloading tons of cargo on the Moon may seem like a preposterous notion. During Apollo, mass restrictions were so draconian that the Lunar Module could carry two astronauts, their spacesuits, some food, and just 300 pounds (136 kg) of scientific payload down to the lunar surface. By contrast, Starship is designed to carry 100 tons, or more, to the lunar surface in a single mission. This is an insane amount of cargo relative to anything in spaceflight history, but thats the future that [Jaret] Matthews is aiming toward.

Image Credit:CARTIST / Unsplash

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This Week's Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through April 27) - Singularity Hub