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An interesting article outlining a theory about how primordial black holes created shortly after the big bang could account for the “missing matter” that we’ve been attributing to dark matter. Apparently this is a theory originally pioneered by Stephen Hawking, but fell out of favor when no one was able to observe all these black holes that should be floating around out there.

More recently, the LIGO should be detecting far more black hole colisions if space is full of these primordial black holes.

However, this new theory postulates that the black holes would have formed in clusters of up to a thousand black holes crammed together, with huge black holes at the center, and tiny asteroid-sized black holes around the edge. The clusters explain why we haven’t observed these primordial black holes yet, and their orbits keep them from colliding often and explain the low collision rates seen my LIGO.

Apparently if we’re able to observe one of these asteroid-sized black holes it would be a huge step forward for this primordial black hole theory, as black holes that small can’t be formed by collapsing stars.

It’s an interesting, easy to read article, plus it has these absolutely gorgeous illustrations:

I also found this related discussion on Hacker News about what might happen (or not happen) if one of these asteroid-sized black holes colided with earth very interesting.

An asteroid-mass black hole would be too small to interact much. It would go straight through the planet, and couldn’t possibly capture enough mass to be e.g. captured, but it would register as something like a very high energy cosmic ray.

This is an amazing multiplayer virtual museum, complete with different interactive exhibits in the form of rooms. There’s a rhyme room where you can only say things that rhyme with what’s already been said. There’s a mirror room. There’s a censorship room where each word can only be said once. I did manage to say my name in the censorship room though.

Fittingly brief piece on our decreasing attention spans in this tweetable era. Krish’s thesis is that the problem can’t be solved from a capitalist perspective because companies sell what people want, so instead of trying to solve it we should adapt to it, be prepared for it, and think about how our thinking and communication will be changed in the long term.

Krish suggests that while our intra-personal communication will become decreasingly verbose, it may also become increasingly efficient, until we no longer need to use words and can communicate sensations directly, and that this could have beneficial implications for equality and education, as communication/language barriers will cease to be barriers to understanding.

There’s a cameo from Kanye in the article, who has an interesting take. Awesome:

I don’t think people are going to talk in the future…They’re going to communicate through eye contact, body language, emojis, signs. Imagine that. If everyone was forced to learn sign language. ^Source

It’s an interesting take, but I feel it’s rather optimistic about the outcome of decreasing attention spans. I think if we lose our ability to focus for longer than the length of a tweet we won’t possibly be capable of implementing the required drastic changes to adapt to what we’re talking about.

I’m also less pessimistic, in a way: I don’t think this is an inevitability. While it’s true that attention spans are surely decreasing, I think people recognize it as a problem in themselves and will strive to overcome.