Good news: mathematicians just proved that spinning black holes are actually stable and won't just 'break' if something bumps into them.
March 25, 2026
Original Paper
Energy-Morawetz estimates for Teukolsky equations in perturbations of Kerr
arXiv · 2603.23437
The Takeaway
For decades, it was an open question whether the spinning black holes predicted by Einstein were actually stable or if a small ripple in space-time would cause them to collapse. This research provides a critical mathematical foundation to prove that black holes remain stable even at extreme rotation speeds, confirming they are robust enough to exist in the real universe.
From the abstract
In this paper, we prove energy and Morawetz estimates for solutions to Teukolsky equations in spacetimes with metrics that are perturbations, compatible with nonlinear applications, of Kerr metrics in the full subextremal range. The Teukolsky equations are written in tensorial form using the non-integrable formalism in \cite{GKS22}, and we follow the approach in \cite{Ma} of relying on a Teukolsky wave/transport system. The estimates are proved by extending the ideas from our earlier result \cit