Astronomers just watched a black hole twist spacetime - Science Daily

Ellers/University of California, Berkeley. Einstein's theory of general relativity describes gravity as the bending of spacetime, a mathematical model that combines three-dimensional space and time into a single, four-dimensional continuum. The theory also predicts that a rotating object, such as Earth, slightly drags the surrounding spacetime as it rotates, a phenomenon known as frame-dragging. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) recently introduced the idea of a quantum sensor that could measure this tiny effect in a laboratory setting.

Physics allows for black holes far smaller than the enormous objects typically found at the centers of galaxies or created when massive stars collapse. Under the right conditions, microscopic black holes could also form when spacetime enters an unusual critical state and organizes into a repeating, crystal-like pattern. Researchers from Goethe University Frankfurt and TU Wien have now found a way to describe this process mathematically. For the first time, they derived an exact formula for the phenomenon by using an unconventional mathematical approach.