Chen Deng

In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope gave humanity the first image of a black hole's shadow. Since then, astrophysicists have dreamed of more: seeing how matter moves in the very funnel of spacetime. One of the mysteries is chaos.

A black hole is not just a dark sphere in space. If there is gas and dust nearby, they swirl into a flat, glowing disk that gradually falls inward. This disk acts like a lamp, illuminating the hole itself, and against the bright background you can see its shadow — a dark silhouette with sharp edges. But what if the disk is not flat but torn into pieces?

The orchestra plays without a conductor. Each instrument follows its own schedule: the violin on Monday, the flute on Wednesday, the timpani on Saturday. Astronomers hear not music but isolated notes scattered across the calendar. A telescope sees a star only when it is above the horizon and when the schedule has allotted time for it.