Higher-dimensional black holes hide an exact symmetry in their ringing, and string-inspired gravity breaks it

AI Summary

Recent research explores the ringing behavior of higher-dimensional black holes, revealing an exact symmetry in their quasinormal modes. Findings also show that string-inspired gravity theories break this symmetry, advancing understanding of gravitational waves and fundamental physics.

Strike a bell, and it rings with a pitch and a fading that tell you about the bell: its size, its shape, the metal it is made of. Black holes ring too. When two merge, the newborn black hole shivers and sheds gravitational waves in a brief, dying chord, and since 2015, gravitational-wave detectors have been listening. The notes of that chord, which physicists call quasinormal modes, depend only on the black hole's mass and spin and on the law of gravity itself. Change the law, and the chord changes.