by Richard E. | Jun 19, 2025 | Black Holes and Gravitational Waves, Dark matter and dark energy, Self Gravitating Quantum Matter
We simulated binary supermassive black holes moving in an ultralight dark matter soliton. The simulations ran longer and at higher resolution than earlier efforts. For black hole and soliton parameters consistent with very large galaxies the orbit decayed faster than...
by Richard E. | Dec 11, 2024 | Technical Notes
A Lean and Mean Introduction to Modern General Relativity, lecture notes by Peter Hayman Notes prepared for the introductory general relativity course PHYSICS 748 at The University of Auckland. They are designed to introduce general relativity to upper-year...
by Richard E. | Aug 29, 2024 | Writing and Videos
The whole story Topics such as statistical physics, emergence and even climate dynamics can be presented by starting with two-body interactions on toy air-hockey tables. (Courtesy: Shutterstock/Fer Gregory) The top two physics books on Goodreads are Stephen...
by Richard E. | Apr 4, 2024 | Black Holes and Gravitational Waves, Dark matter and dark energy, Feature, Self Gravitating Quantum Matter
We simulate a black moving radially through an ultralight dark matter soliton. The black hole makes multiple passes through the soliton, shedding a little energy each time but eventually oscillates about its common centre of mass with the now-excited soliton. ...
by Richard E. | Dec 20, 2023 | Writing and Videos
Amongst everything else that happened in 2023, a key anniversary of a huge leap in our understanding of the Universe passed largely unnoticed – the centenary of the realisation that not only was our Sun one of many stars in the Milky Way galaxy but that our galaxy was...