The focus is on a spinning black hole. Its gravity is so strong that it warps the space around it, altering the trajectory of everything passing by. Calculating such interactions with a neutron star, a superdense object the size of a city, required solving cumbersome equations. The authors of the paper came up with an elegant trick: they reduced all computations to a single generating function. This mathematical tool is like a universal dough: from it, by simple differentiation (like slicing), you instantly get any detail of the process — from the force of attraction to the star's deformation.

The black hole's tidal forces stretch the neutron star, and the new method allowed calculating this deformation without months-long computer simulations. Amazingly, the function contains all possible scenarios at once: it describes an encounter with any black hole, of any size and rotation speed: you just plug in the parameters.

This approach not only saves time but also helps more accurately predict elusive gravitational waves — ripples in spacetime that scientists have only recently begun to detect.