During the coronavirus lockdown, some birds changed their tune

To view this email as a web page, go [here.]( [The Christian Science Monitor]( Science & Nature October 13, 2020 One month free trial of The Christian Science Monitor Daily. [Sign up]( [During the coronavirus lockdown, some birds changed their tune]( By Eva Botkin-Kowacki Staff writer | [@EBotkinKowacki "]( [Read now]( [The Sudbury model: How one of the world’s major polluters went green]( By Sara Miller Llana Staff writer | [@sarallana "]( [Read now]( If the story of our evolving understanding of black holes tells us anything so far, it's that you can't go wrong by placing your trust in math. Last Tuesday, the 2020 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to the British mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, the US astronomer Andrea Ghez, and the German astronomer Reinhard Genzel. Dr. Ghez and Dr. Genzel, who shared half the prize, led rival teams that since the 1990s have been demonstrating with increasing certainty that a supermassive black hole lies at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Dr. Penrose, who received one half of the award, made his discovery decades earlier not by peering through a telescope, but by developing mathematical tools to better wield Einstein’s field equations. In the 1960s, scientists had little direct evidence for black holes, objects that were at the time seen more as a mathematical anomaly than as an astrophysical reality. But in a seminal 1964 paper, Dr. Penrose showed, in fewer than three pages, that the existence of objects whose gravitational pull is so great that not even light itself can escape wasn't merely theoretically possible, it was, under certain circumstances, mathematically inevitable. In other words, the most monstrous objects known to science – these incomprehensibly deep gravity wells that casually fling stars like ping pong balls, emit blazing jets of radiation, and even spin up entire galaxies – were discovered not because we observed their universe-shaking effects, but because they gently revealed themselves Einstein's equations. What we typically think of as the normal process was turned on its head: First they discovered the model, then the thing being modeled. Thankfully, back holes don’t feature as part of our day-to-day reality. But that's not the case for other scientific phenomena such as the Earth’s climate system. When scientists warn us, for instance, that their calculations show that humanity's current consumption patterns are driving ecological collapse, it’s easy to dismiss it as just a model. But, as Dr. Penrose’s work showed, mathematical models can reveal massive truths. -- Eoin O’Carroll, Science writer [Holy misdirected anger! Bats not to blame, say scientists.]( By Eva Botkin-Kowacki Staff writer | [@EBotkinKowacki "]( [Read now]( Free trial [Subscribe]( Monitor Daily One month free trial Receive our best stories each weekday evening in your inbox. - Handpicked articles delivered to your inbox - Editor commentary on why each story matters - Quick-read versions of each story - Ad-free experience - Daily audio digest [About the Monitor Daily](. [Sign up]( The Christian Science Monitor is a trademark of The Christian Science Publishing Society, registered in the United States and in other countries. The Christian Science Monitor The Christian Science Monitor210 Massachusetts Ave, Boston, MA, 02115-3195, United States © 2020 The Christian Science Publishing Society [Privacy]( [Unsubscribe]( Profile]( [Email Preference Center](