One of Stephen Hawking’s scientifically most influential works was confirmed last week by a strong gravitational wave signal. The signal was detected in January this year by the LIGO/Virgo/Karga collaboration that combines 4 gravitational wave interferometers in the USA, Italy, and Japan. The analysis revealed that the event was a merger of two black holes of roughly 30 solar masses each, and also that of the final black hole. Hawking’s prediction (known as the “black hole area theorem”) was that since the surface area of black holes (which is proportional to the square of the mass) determines their entropy, the total surface area can only increase in a merger. The new observation confirms this beautifully. (Animation: Deborah Ferguson, Derek Davis, Rob Coyne (URI)/University of Rhode Island )

It is rather foreseeable that in the next years, social media in all formats will drown in AI slop and deepfakes, and many people will return to legacy media simply because of better content control, with the possible exception of large and well-known accounts.

I finally got a chance to explain why entanglement is not a spooky action, or any action for that matter.