Plus, how "odd couple" black holes find each other ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
October 9, 2026—Our reporters sifted through OpenAI’s heap of new math claims and found the best ones. Also, black hole pairings and the scientific scoop on a new movie.
—Emma Gometz,
Newsletter Editor
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Shutterstock/Tech Solution
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Open AI dropped a heap of new math proofs that provide solutions to previously unsolvable problems. Here are the most exciting ones. | 9 min read
Feverish after a vaccine? A recent study found it could be because of your gut microbiome and a protein called flagellin. | 2 min read
I took a social media scientist to see The Social Reckoning, a new movie about the dangers of Facebook’s content moderation practices. Here’s what she had to say. | 5 min read
Inserting an IUD can really hurt, and often patients are told there’s no way around it. This doctor is fighting for change. | 18 min podcast
Our sun has a few unusual properties, such as a surprisingly weak magnetic field. Does that mean it doesn’t qualify as a “sunlike star”? | 5 min read
Scientists are using attachment theory to figure out if we should be concerned about human-AI relationships. | 4 min read
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“Odd Couple” Black Holes
Binary black holes are pairs of black holes that orbit around each other and slowly move closer together. Some of them eventually merge into a single, faster-spinning black hole. Now, research suggests that some black holes that were the result of a merger are finding love again and go on to join new black hole partnerships called “hierarchical mergers.” In two recently released studies, scientists used gravitational waves to capture a distinct group of binary black holes that have “strong signatures” of hierarchical merging—one of the pair is much larger, is spinning faster and orbits out of alignment with its partner.
Why this matters: This picture of black holes’ origin stories could help clarify how supernova physics work and how galaxies evolve, plus add to our understanding of general relativity and the history of the universe. One study suggested that about 14 percent of black hole duos out there may be hierarchical mergers.
What the experts say: “At minimum, we’re finding evidence that there are these highly spinning and weirdly tilted black holes in the dataset, and the most straightforward way to interpret that, the Occam’s razor answer, is that these black holes probably came from previous mergers,” says Cailin Plunkett, lead author on one of the recent studies and a Ph.D. candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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MOST POPULAR STORIES OF THE WEEK
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OpenAI unleashes hundreds more math results upon a field already in shock | 3 min read
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The Nobel Prizes were announced this week, and I want to thank our amazing news team for waking up long before sunrise to report on the winners. If you haven’t already, read all about the prizes in Physics, Chemistry, and Physiology or Medicine! And be sure to scroll down to the middle of each article to see Adam Kovac, Jackie Mogensen and Joe Howlett sharing the news bright-eyed and bushy tailed on camera.
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Please send your thoughts, comments or feedback to: newsletters@sciam.com. Have a great long weekend, Andrea will be back on Tuesday.
—Emma Gometz,
Newsletter Editor
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