Jorge E. Santos

The third law of black hole mechanics, proposed by Stephen Hawking, forbids a hole from spinning up to its limit in finite time — much like a whirlpool would need an eternity to reach absolute speed. Yet numerical simulations in five dimensions break this rule.

A black hole is like a whirlpool in the ocean: anything that falls in disappears forever. But if the whirlpool spins and carries a slight electric charge, and invisible axion particles (dark matter candidates) are buzzing around it, its surface stops being smooth.