Vassilis Charmandaris

At the center of galaxy VV 340a lies a supermassive black hole — an object with gravity so strong that even light cannot escape it. It emits a relativistic jet: a narrow stream of matter accelerated to near-light speeds.

In the shaft leading to the Large Hadron Collider, an unusual tenant may soon move in: a hundred-meter vertical tube where clouds of strontium atoms will be dropped. Each cloud is cooled to near absolute zero, so the atoms move slowly and in sync, like dancers in slow motion.