The phenomenon of black holes in space was only theoretical until the late 1950s and early 1960s, when scientists began to apply the theory of relativity to these mathematical oddities. Through decades of research and calculations, scientists have now more or less accepted the existence of black holes as truth. They never expected to find black holes right here on Earth, however.

That all changed when scientists from ETH Zurich and the University of Miami discovered what could reasonably be called black holes in the middle of the ocean. These water-bound “black holes” are mathematically equivalent to black holes in space. They exhibit many of the same characteristics of space black holes: nothing that gets too close to them can escape, including water. These Earthly “black holes” – more or less giant rotating eddies – can span up to 90 miles in diameter and have been observed drifting around the ocean for up to a year.

Far from the rather scary prospect of black holes in space, the ocean-bound massive eddies help to distribute warm and salty water and microorganisms like plankton around the ocean. They also pick up pollutants like oil and plastics. Since the eddies do not lose a single drop of water on their travels, they take everything that they pick up with them until they dissipate in a new location. Thanks to their unique characteristics, the black holes of the ocean can help scientists and mathematicians learn more about the black holes of space and even pollution distribution channels in Earth’s oceans.

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Having cancer is hard enough, but often the treatment is just as bad as – if not worse than – the disease itself. In the interest of treating certain types of cancer more safely and with less radiation than current methods, Ohio State University astronomers Sultana Nahar and Anil Pradhan have looked to the stars for a novel solution. The researchers were looking at black holes to study how chemical elements react to radiation around black holes and in stars. They do this by watching how radiation is emitted from and absorbed by these elements.

As they watched computer models of heavy metals reacting with radiation, they realized that the metals throw off low-energy electrons when they are hit with a small dose of X-rays. Believe it or not, this could be huge news for cancer sufferers. The connection comes from those low-energy electrons. If this process took place inside a human body, the ejected electrons could easily destroy cancer cells. If an implant containing platinum nanoparticles were placed at the site of a malignant tumor and then hit with a small, focused dose of X-rays, the tumor would be easily obliterated.

The patient wouldn’t have to suffer through traditional radiation or chemotherapy and the treatment, in theory, would be just as effective. The healthy cells surrounding the tumor would be left unharmed. Although there is plenty more research to be done on this concept, the team is hopeful that they have stumbled upon a revolutionary cancer treatment. They have built a proof-of-concept machine that shows how the electron-freeing process works, but

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Astronomers have known for many years that black holes are out there in the universe, sucking in and destroying any stars that happen to venture too close to their awesome gravitational pulls. But until now, what happens to those unfortunate stars has been pure speculation. In early 2011, scientists witnessed for the first time a black hole tearing apart and “eating” a huge star. Although the actual visuals weren’t as fantastically graphic as the animation below, they can help teach the scientific community a great deal about the nature of these massive mysteries.

What the scientists actually detected were extremely bright bursts of gamma rays in patterns unlike anything ever seen before. The flare happened in the center of a galaxy and the radiation expanded at 99.5 percent of the speed of light – all of which was evidence that the flare came from the destruction of a large star. The black hole that devoured the star boasted a mass of roughly 100 million times the mass of our sun, which is about the same size as the black hole at the center of our own galaxy. Even though it was discovered in the very last stage of its lifetime, astronomers on the project named the doomed star Swift J1644+57.

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Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Researchers at Fermilab are determined to figure out whether our third dimension is just an illusion by building the world’s most precise clock ever. The somewhat baffling theory behind the experiment goes something like this: spacetime is not exactly smooth, but rather pixelated like a digital photo once you zoom in ultra-close. Since, as far as we know, nothing moves faster than the speed of light, what we perceive as the third dimension might in fact be an illusion created by an intertwining of depth and time.

The theory has been proposed by multiple physicists, but there is no real evidence to back it up – only mathematical theories derived from black hole physics. That’s why the Fermilab team is building their holometer, an instrument meant to measure the uncertainty or “wobble” theorized to be present in spacetime.

The holographic interferometer being constructed at Fermilab works in a way similar to classic interferometers: it splits a beam of light into two, then measures the difference in “holographic noise,” or vibrations in spacetime, between the identical beams. This is the first experiment of its kind and the first time that a team of physicists will be able to measure the fundamental nature of spacetime. The first measurements from the holometer should be taken sometime in 2011, so get ready for your mind to be permanently blown.

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The mysteries of our universe are vast, and even with all of our scientific and technological knowledge we still have to unravel the riddles of our existence. A theory from an Indiana University professor is putting an even-more-mysterious spin on the origins of our universe. Nikodem Poplawski of IU-Bloomington proposes that we’re actually living inside a black hole located in another universe – and that every black hole is potentially a bridge to another universe. His theory uses a modified version of Eintein’s theory of general relativity that takes into account the effect of particle spin.

Putting particle spin into the equation also lets the theorist put the calculation of torsion into the mix. Poplawski says that when the density of matter gets to a certain point, torsion counters gravity and stops matter from compressing indefinitely. Instead, the matter rebounds like a spring and starts expanding again, which could explain why our universe is expanding today.

It might be possible to figure out whether we’re all living inside another universe’s black hole. According to Poplawski, the spin of a black hole would impart some spin to the space-time inside it, which would violate the Lorentz symmetry, a law of symmetry that links space and time. Although it might seem like common sense to just go take a peek into other black holes to see if there are other universes in there, that type of observation is impossible. As you approach a black hole, the huge gravitational pull makes time move slower and slower, so an observer would have to wait an infinite amount of time before being able to see a universe inside.

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