Audio Edition: Astrophysicists Find No ‘Hair’ on Black Holes
The Quanta Podcast
Quanta Magazine
4.7 • 638 Ratings
🗓️ 28 May 2026
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
According to Einstein’s theory of gravity, black holes have only a small handful of distinguishing characteristics. Quantum theory implies they may have more. Now an experimental search finds that any of this extra ‘hair’ has to be pretty short.
The story Astrophysicists Find No ‘Hair’ on Black Holes first appeared on Quanta Magazine.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Quanta Audio Edition. |
| 0:07.0 | In each of these bi-weekly episodes, we bring you a story direct from the Quanta website about developments in basic science and mathematics. |
| 0:15.0 | I'm Susan Vallett. Why are physicists interested in whether black holes have hair or no hair? |
| 0:22.1 | The answer to this question will reveal whether Einstein's theory of gravity is correct. |
| 0:27.8 | That's next. |
| 0:32.4 | Check out this feed every Tuesday for the Quanta podcast. That's where Editor-in-Chief, Samir Patel, |
| 0:40.8 | talks to our writers and editors about more of Quanta's most popular, interesting, and thought-provoking stories. |
| 0:59.8 | According to Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, |
| 1:03.4 | the behavior of a black hole depends on two numbers, |
| 1:06.6 | how heavy it is and how fast it's rotating. |
| 1:07.8 | And that's it. |
| 1:10.8 | Black holes are said to have no hair, meaning no features that distinguish them from other black holes with the same mass and spin. With new data, it started to become possible to test this no hair conjecture. Astronomers have detected hundreds of signals from colliding black holes over the past decade. |
| 1:28.8 | In these dramatic events, two of the invisible, inescapable pits in the fabric of space-time |
| 1:34.9 | circle one another faster and faster. Then they merge into a single, massive black hole that |
| 1:41.5 | jiggles like jello as it settles down after the collision. The merging and |
| 1:46.6 | jiggling sends ripples called gravitational waves, cascading outward through the fabric of the universe |
| 1:52.8 | and two detectors here on Earth. If general relativity is correct, those jiggles have a cookie |
| 1:58.9 | cutter form that depends only on each hole's mass and spin. If the theory is correct, those jiggles have a cookie cutter form that depends only on each hole's mass and spin. |
| 2:03.7 | If the theory is wrong, astronomers might observe something new, subtle distinctions that reveal |
| 2:09.3 | the unique history and makeup of each black hole. Fittur Cardoso is a physicist at the Nealsbor Institute |
| 2:16.4 | in Copenhagen. He says as years went by and the |
| 2:19.8 | events piled up, they realized that we could have stronger, more robust tests of the theory |
... |
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