Shailesh Kumar

A drop of ink falls into a glass of water, and instead of a flat stain, a ring is born that immediately starts to spin. That's roughly what the birth of a skyrmion looks like: light emitted by a tiny source twists into a stable vortex. Until now, such vortices could only be produced by large lasers.

A tiny star spirals around a giant rotating black hole. Slowly, it moves closer in a spiral, and this dance lasts thousands of years. All the while, waves ripple through space, like ripples on water, but these are gravitational waves. They can be "heard" with special detectors.