If a black hole passed through a thin sheet of 'superfluid,' it would start popping out quantum whirlpools like crazy.
March 17, 2026
Original Paper
Topological Phase Transitions in Superfluids Near Black Hole Horizons
arXiv · 2603.13544
The Takeaway
This research shows that the extreme gravity and heat of a black hole event horizon would act as a catalyst for a physical phase change in exotic fluids. It suggests that a black hole could be treated like a giant laboratory probe that 'pokes' a quantum liquid until it breaks into vortex-antivortex pairs.
From the abstract
We investigated a two-dimensional superfluid model immersed in a black hole spacetime and hypothesize that if a black hole collides with a thin superfluid film, it will trigger a topological phase transition within the superfluid, characterized by the production of vortex--antivortex pairs. We adapted the 2D XY model to a curved spacetime and elucidated the topological phase transition in response to variations in the black hole's temperature. Specializing the model to a Schwarzschild--de Sitter