Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday met with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto via video link.

With the rise of social media networks and involvement of capital, fandom culture as a niche subculture has attracted more and more attention from the mainstream. 

From an external perspective, the rapid advancement of technology and social media platforms have served as prerequisites, while investment from the capital market has fueled its development. As to the internal factors, the formation of fan communities meets people's psychological needs. For one thing, in today's fast-paced modern society, some young people have made online platforms their first choice to ease loneliness and express their feelings, while fan clubs allow people to show off their personality, achieve self-satisfaction and gain a sense of community and belonging. 

Debate about fandom culture tends to focus on its potential dangers. 

To begin with, the distortion of values caused by group polarization, especially for younger generations, leads to shocking incidents like pouring out drink bottles just to obtain a QR code inside the bottle cap to support an idol. Besides wasting resources and over-consumption, craze-driven irrational behavior such as stalking, doxing, fighting, and invading people's privacy have endangered public safety. 

More seriously, the uneven occupation of online resources by celebrity topics or entertainment events triggered by a large amount of fan participation and capital manipulation takes atte  ntion away from significant issues that involve public life. Under such circumstances, our culture, sports, education, and businesses would likely be reduced to entertainment accessories, and the final result might lead to actually "amusing" ourselves to death. 

However, as some observers fret about these dystopian scenarios, others focus on the potential rewards.

First, personalized consumption in fandom culture boosts the economy. In August, a popular Chinese idol group fueled a ticket-buying binge in which the first batch of over 33,000 tickets were snapped up in a few seconds. Revenue on ticket and live-streaming platforms reached more than 100 million yuan ($13.6 million) and drove local tourism revenue up to 416 million yuan. With social media, forces converge quickly, and fans can do great things for their idols. Their desire for expression, interactivity, and participation leads to a long tail effect in the vast fan market, which contains enormous consumption potential and benefits upstream and downstream industry development. 

Secondly, fandom culture alleviates the crisis of contemporary social identity and soothes our souls. As a social subculture system, fandom culture is based on seeking social interaction and identity recognition. Fans build emotional trust, form a community with common ideals, and find a new identity and a sense of belonging through communication and interaction with group members in an increasingly atomized society. For fans who have gone through their youth accompanied by some idols, nostalgia reveals their inner desire for a familiar, safe, and stable environment that serves as a spiritual sanctuary and utopia for rosy memories, helping them confront the fragmentation of the modern world and the discomfort of the rapid changes under globalization.

Fandom culture also empowers society. An idol who constantly contributes positive energy is an essential source of cohesion in society. Fans' heartfelt wishes to become better people alongside their idols have led them to ask idols to behave with higher standards and set good examples. 

For instance, some celebrities encourage fans to develop good reading habits, promote Chinese traditional culture, which is increasingly favored by young people, and participate in activities such as environmental protection and poverty alleviation. Several public benefit activities have benefited from the tremendous force and passion of fan communities, which are mainly composed of the Post-1990 and Post-2000 generations, who possess a higher level of education and more self-discipline. 

A fan may be a company staff, a professional photographer, or an illustrator and designer. They all have proficiency in a particular line. Thus, their efforts not only bring more energy and sunshine to society but also enrich the cultural ecology.  

So, fan culture is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, based on similar interests or shared memory, it allows fans to build social networks to find a new identity, accumulate real or virtual resources both online and offline, and form informal organizations. On the other hand, it also causes the group to get stuck in information cocoons and possibly tend to behave irrationally due to the existence of the "echo chamber effect." Fans are easily reduced to digital laborers and "one-dimensional people." 

Fan culture, driven by technology and capital, alters what we think and how we behave without us realizing it, making a difference in the overall cyberculture and even society as a whole. Whether it is a bane or boon depends on how we lead and guide. 

Accordingly, we should, above all, realize the pros and cons brought about by the development of fan culture and strengthen top-level design to shape a comprehensive paradigm featuring multi-party collaboration, namely government, platform, and fan groups, which will promote economic development, generate positive energy and minimize adverse effects. 

The Indonesia-China Business Forum and Indonesia Night were successfully held in Beijing to promote Indonesian culture and seek economic cooperation between the two countries.

A total of 250 people from the Chinese business community and various business sectors in Indonesia attended the event. 

Indonesian Ambassador to China Djauhari Oratmangun presided over the forum and stated that on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the establishment of a comprehensive strategic partnership between Indonesia and China this year, the business forum has built a platform for potential cooperation between the two countries.

During the event, China and Indonesia signed a memorandum of understanding on strengthening mutual cooperation.

In order to promote Indonesian culture and traditional textile fabrics (Batik), more than 200 entrepreneurs, scholars, and officials from China, Indonesia, and other countries, as well as media professionals, attended the banquet. 

In his speech, Oratmangun noted that, "this is the first Indonesian night to be held in China since the start of the epidemic. This Indonesian night will showcase Indonesia's rich and colorful culture, music, traditional dance, coffee, and traditional textile fabrics."

The governor of the Bank Indonesian also presented traditional Indonesian clothing to 16 individuals who have contributed to the promotion of relations between Indonesia and China, including the Indonesian Ambassador to China and his wife, as well as the Indonesian Consul General in Guangzhou.

Normally, seeing people walking their dogs in the evening is a common sight in Beijing, including big dogs like golden retrievers, huskies and border collies.

But on Monday evening this week, the Global Times only saw one person walking her small teddy bear dog.

This might be because of reports that have gone viral on social media platforms claiming that Beijing regional authorities planned to inspect every local community on Monday to catch stray dogs and any illegal or unregistered pet dogs, or those being walked without a leash.

The inspection did not happen in the end, despite the claims online. But the Global Times learned from some dog breeders in Chaoyang that some people have been promoting high-end kennels - which cost 20,000 yuan ($2,736) per year - citing the so-called Monday inspections.

There are similar situations across the country and heated discussion over dog management, after a 2-year-old girl was reportedly seriously hurt by a rottweiler in Chongzhou, a county-level city in Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan Province.

The girl has got through the most dangerous period, media reports said, and was moved from intensive care to a normal ward on Monday. But the controversy over the news is growing, and many local authorities and property management companies are reportedly planning campaigns to strengthen local dog management, including catching and possibly even killing stray dogs.

The authorities in Xiamen, East China's Fujian Province, announced on Tuesday the launch of a rectification campaign against illegal dogs until December 30. The campaign will focus on illegal dog-raising behavior like failure to register the dog or conduct a yearly inspection, as well as raising certain fierce dog breeds that are banned in cities and walking dogs without a leash.

A security guard from Chongqing Technology and Business University was reported to have captured and killed a stray dog on October 17, sparking a backlash from the student body. Five days later, the school announced that it had fired the security guard on the grounds of inappropriate behavior during the disposal process.

On Tuesday, posts went viral on Chinese social media platforms claiming that Shanghai public security authorities broke into a local resident's home and took away a large dog. The Shanghai authorities had not responded to the claims as of Tuesday.

Dog owners are now hesitating to take out their pets, and dog lovers are angry about the action being taken against all dogs just based on one incident. Others have called for a more rational approach amid mixed information, and stressed that the most important thing is to complete an effective dog management system.
One dog bites, all dogs pay

The measures to try and catch stray dogs in several Chinese cities have worried some animal rights advocates and dog lovers, who complained the regional governments were using a one-size-fits-all approach.

"Many dogs become strays after being abandoned by their previous owners. They are poor and innocent," said an animal protection volunteer surnamed Wei. "Why do these cities punish the abandoned dogs rather than the people who abandoned them?"

Wei has been rescuing stray dogs and cats in Suzhou, East China's Jiangsu Province for almost a decade. Along with other local volunteers, she has paid with her own money to have the rescued strays vaccinated, and found families willing to adopt them.

Wei said she was sad about the attack on the 2-year-old, as well as other cases of ferocious dogs attacking humans. "But the dogs don't know they've done something wrong," she said, noting that the dog owners should be responsible and take the punishment for their pets.

"Keeping dogs in a civilized manner is a slogan that everybody knows. The important thing is whether there are accompanying measures to put this slogan into practice," Wei told the Global Times. She suggested that regional governments could build a pet-keeping system with practical policies and regulations, such as mandatory use of a leash in public, severe penalties for pet abuse and abandonment, and neutering or spaying the strays.

'Not the dog's fault'

In recent years, reports of dogs biting people have not been uncommon in China. According to data released by the National Health Commission, by the end of 2021 China had the largest number of dogs in the world, reaching 130 million in 2012, with over 12 million people bitten each year. Data released by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention shows that in 2019, there were 276 deaths from rabies nationwide, while in 2018 and 2017, there were 410 and 502 deaths, respectively.

Shen Ruihong, former secretary-general of the China Small Animal Protection Association, said that dogs biting people is not the fault of the dogs, but the fault of their owners and of social management.

"Fierce dogs like rottweilers are in fact relatively obedient and have a stable temperament. With proper training, they can also be used as working dogs, such as police dogs and guard dogs and have great social value. However, in our country, the threshold for owning a dog is too low. You can easily purchase a dog on platforms like Taobao and Douyin without anyone supervising whether you get a dog license, vaccinate the dog, or care for and train it," Shen told Sanlian Lifeweek.

Shen criticized the one-size-fits-all measures by some local authorities that catch and kill all dogs that are not leashed or licensed. Raising pets is an important way for people to cope with stress and loneliness nowadays. Such measures by the authorities could lead to public outrage, he said.

Chinese authorities have been actively making efforts on management of pet dogs in urban areas. Since 1994, the regulations governing dog ownership in Beijing have been revised twice. Before that year, keeping the animals was strictly prohibited in the city.

Most Chinese cities have divided their administrative areas into restricted and non-restricted areas for pet ownership, with restricted areas mostly being the central urban areas. Local regulations explicitly prohibit individuals from keeping aggressive dogs and large breeds in the restricted areas, and a list of banned dog breeds has been established. Some cities also have height requirements for adult dogs. For example, in Beijing, it is forbidden to keep adult dogs with a height exceeding 35 centimeters in the restricted areas.

In addition, pet owners are required to obtain a dog license, which includes registration information such as the owner's name, address, contact information, dog breed, and major physical characteristics. Illegal dogs or those ineligible for a license can be confiscated by the public security authorities, and the owners may also face fines. The fine for individuals is set at 5,000 yuan in Beijing, Shenzhen, and other places, and ranges from 50 yuan to 200 yuan in Chengdu, according to media reports.

The revised national law on prevention of animal epidemics also requires the display of dog licenses and dogs must be leashed when being walked outside. Some cities like Shanghai also require owners to put muzzles on their dogs in public areas.
But few of the regulations are effectively implemented. "The cost of law enforcement is high and the cost of violation is low, requiring a certain amount of manpower and financial resources to implement the regulations. Meanwhile, there are difficulties in defining penalties for dog owners and timely supervision of dog licenses. There is also a need for discussion on how to divide restricted dog ownership areas," a lawyer from Henan-based Zejin law office named Fu Jian told the media.

Shen noted the strict regulations in Germany, as compared to China's ineffective management system. He said that in Germany, dog owners need to pay an annual dog tax. Before owning a large dog or certain breeds, owners must obtain a breeding certificate by passing a theoretical test that covers topics such as animal medicine, animal psychology, and legal knowledge. Dogs also need to attend training schools for behavior correction and training, with training fees typically costing 50 euros per hour. The training cost for aggressive dogs is even higher. Those who fail to properly supervise their dogs in public places will be fined 10,000 euros. Those who privately feed "dangerous dogs" or take dogs out in public will be fined 50,000 euros. "But in China, people barely receive any punishment if they illegally keep, abuse or abandon dogs."

It is also urgently necessary to increase Chinese dog owners' sense of responsibility and their awareness of laws.

"Leashing is necessary, it is the bottom line," Yi Tongmo, a dog trainer told the media. Whether it is a large or small dog, leashing is a must when going out. Yi suggests that dog owners must have a good understanding of civilized dog ownership and actively guide their dogs' behavior. "Prevention is always better than cure; don't wait until the dog shows a tendency to attack people before seeking a solution."

Some successful examples

Shen suggested that Chinese cities could establish a registration system for dog ownership. This has been implemented in some cities such as Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Mechanisms to evaluate and train dogs and supervise their health are also needed. Similar mechanisms should also be applied to other pets, according to Shen.

A dog owner surnamed Guo in Shenzhen told the Global Times on Monday that she just took her dog to implant a chip in its neck. "Pet hospitals can get to know the owner's name and address by simply scanning the chip." But getting the chip is not mandatory.

Amid the current wave of controversy, Shenzhen is one of the few Chinese cities that has been praised for its measures to deal with stray dogs. According to media reports, Shenzhen residents can call local authorities to report stray dogs. The authorities will then go to pick them up, but the stray dogs are then either trained to become working dogs for the local authorities, or sent to local pet shelters for adoption.

The Global Times also found that Shenzhen authorities have established an app for dog ownership services. Owners can make reservations for registration, implanting chips and recording nose prints in the app. People can also use the app to apply to adopt stray dogs.

Another example is Macao. For dogs weighing over 23 kilograms, Macao authorities not only require them to be leashed but also mandate the use of a muzzle. Additionally, the city has established an exemption test for muzzles. The test, designed by animal experts, includes touching, tapping, and holding the dog's mouth to observe if any abnormal reactions occur. Dogs are also introduced to unfamiliar people and dogs to assess their behavior toward strangers. If the test is not passed, the dog must wear a muzzle when going out; if passed, the certification is valid for three years. The establishment of such exams actually promotes the scientific training of large dogs by their owners.

The Chinese Embassy in Pakistan and the Chinese Consulate General in Karachi have strongly condemned an attack on a convoy of Chinese engineers working on a project at Gwadar port, Pakistan on Sunday morning. 

The convoy was ambushed by bombs and gunshots on their way from the airport to the port at 9:17 am Sunday local time, according to a statement released by the Chinese Consulate General in Karachi on Sunday. No injuries or casualties were reported in the attack. 

The convoy of three SUVs and a van, all bulletproof, carried 23 Chinese personnel, the Global Times learned from one of the Chinese personnel. 

An IED exploded during the attack and the van was shot at. A picture obtained by the Global Times shows the bulletproof glass on the window of a van belonging to the Chinese convoy cracked from the attack, and there were bullet holes on the windows. 

All the personnel concerned have been properly relocated, according to the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan.

The Embassy and the Chinese Consulate General in Karachi on Sunday night strongly condemned the act of terrorism, and asked the Pakistani side to severely punish the attackers and to take practical and effective measures to ensure the safety of Chinese nationals, institutions and projects. 

The Consulate General activated the emergency response plan immediately, reminding local Chinese nationals, enterprises and projects to be more vigilant, upgrade security initiatives, prevent security risks, closely monitor the security situation and ensure safety.

The Chinese Embassy and Consulate General urged Chinese nationals in Pakistan to maintain high vigilance, safeguard life and property safety, and strictly control large-scale gathering activities due to the severe security situation. 

China will continue to work with Pakistan to jointly address the threat of terrorism and effectively protect the security of Chinese personnel, institutions and projects in Pakistan, said the embassy in a statement. 

Pakistani security forces killed one terrorist and three others were injured during a security clearance operation in Gwadar, local media outlet Daily Pakistan reported Sunday. After getting intelligence about the presence of militants, security forces cordoned off the area and started a search operation to find other militants, according to Daily Pakistan. 

The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a militant separatist group, claimed responsibility for the attack, according to media reports.

Chinese personnel have been targeted by terror attacks by Baloch militant groups many times. 

In April 2022, a terror attack against the shuttle bus used by Karachi's Confucius Institute killed three Chinese teachers and their local driver, for which the BLA took responsibility.

In August 2021, two children were killed and three were wounded in an attack targeting Chinese nationals in Gwadar.

In July 2021, a shuttle bus blast in Pakistan that killed nine Chinese and four Pakistanis was confirmed to be a terrorist attack. 

In April 2021, a deadly car bomb explosion that rocked a hotel which was hosting the Chinese ambassador in Quetta, Bolochistan province killed five people, for which Pakistan Taliban claimed responsibility. 

In 2018, the BLA attacked the Chinese Consulate-General in Karachi in south Pakistan, during which two police officers were killed. In May 2017, 10 workers were killed by two gunmen on motorbikes, which the BLA claimed was a response to the development of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

The purpose of this BLA-planned terrorist attack is no different from the previous terror attacks against Chinese personnel, mainly because it wants to impact China-Pakistan cooperation, especially the CPEC, Qian Feng, director of the research department at the National Strategy Institute at Tsinghua University, told the Global Times.

The terrorist group deliberately set the attack in August as the CPEC had just celebrated the 10th anniversary of its cooperation in July and was hoping to take advantage of a period of change in the administration in the country.

Qian noted that although the ongoing unrest in Balochistan has limited the Pakistani government's presence in the province, the Pakistani government managed to protect Chinese personnel from being harmed in this attack, which demonstrates the strength of their protection. The attack will not affect the continued construction of CPEC in the future, he said.

For Wisconsin’s snowshoe hares, climate change now ranks as an even bigger menace than the bulldozing, paving and other destructive things people have done to northern forests.

Habitat loss as humans reshape landscapes has loomed for decades as the main conservation problem for a lot of wildlife. It’s still important, says climate change ecologist Benjamin Zuckerberg of the University of Wisconsin‒Madison. But along the southern boundary of the snowshoe hares’ range, climate change bringing skimpy snow covers has surpassed direct habitat loss as a threat, Zuckerberg and his colleagues say March 30 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
North America’s Lepus americanus hares may be especially sensitive to climate change. “Almost everything about them screams adaptation to seasons of extensive snow cover,” says study coauthor Jonathan Pauli, also at Wisconsin‒Madison. The hares have outsized snowshoe feet, thick fur and an annual molt from brown to snow-white. Getting out of sync with the snow turns camouflage into a come-on for predators (SN Online: 1/26/16). In bad years, “there’s a lot of white hares on brown backgrounds,” Pauli says.

To see how the hares have fared, the researchers looked for signs of the animals at 199 sites during the winters of 2012‒2013 and 2013‒2014. Many of these locations were mentioned in a rather anecdotal 1945 study and in a more systematic one in 1979 to 1980. Satellite images showed not much change in the overall amount of hare-suitable forest since the 1980s, but snow cover averages have declined. When researchers put all their information into a computer simulation, the climate-related changes — particularly the length of the snow-cover season — did a better job of explaining the ups and downs of hare populations than just the forest changes did.
Snow cover has powerful effects on hares. For each 7.41 days that snow blankets the landscape, snowshoe hare populations become four times as likely to survive, the researchers found.

If the hares dwindle from a place, the loss may ripple through the ecosystem. “Snowshoe hares are central, really central, to prey species,” Pauli says. Lynx, great horned owls, coyotes and many more species dine on them. And regardless of any ecosystem role, hares are remarkable creatures in their own right. “It’s hard for me, a person living in Wisconsin, to imagine these northern conifer forests without snowshoe hares,” Pauli says.
To prevent such a loss, reducing greenhouse gases is important, but so is creating “climate-resilient landscapes,” Zuckerberg says. For snowshoe hares, that landscape might bristle and tangle with abundant, thick young growth, full of hiding places for too conspicuous, out-of-season-sync hares, he suggests.

White furry animals may not be the only ones that will have to cope with a shift in the balance of threats. “In a number of cold-associated butterflies, and also birds, it is becoming clear that climate change is beginning to surpass land use as the primary driver of extinction at the trailing edges of the species’ range,” says ecologist Tom Oliver of the University of Reading in England. And the threats of climate change and land-use upsets can intensify each other. “We appear to be entering a worrying time,” Oliver says.

A mushroom whose genes have been edited with molecular scissors known as CRISPR/Cas9 doesn’t need to be regulated like other genetically modified crops, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said April 13 in a letter to the mushroom’s creator. The edible fungus is the first CRISPR-edited crop to clear USDA regulation.

Yinong Yang, a plant pathologist at Penn State University, used CRISPR/Cas9 to snip out a tiny bit of one gene from the mushroom Agaricus bisporus. The edit reduces browning when the mushroom is sliced.

Because the gene editing left no foreign DNA behind, the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service determined that the mushroom poses no risk to other plants and is not likely to become a weed.

Yang says he plans to submit data about the mushroom to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. FDA clearance isn’t required but, says Yang, “we’re not just going to start marketing these mushrooms without FDA approval.”

Below most volcanoes, Earth packs some serious deep heat. Mount St. Helens is a standout exception, suggests a new study. Cold rock lurks under this active Washington volcano.

Using data from a seismic survey (that included setting off 23 explosions around the volcano), Steven Hansen, a geophysicist at the University of New Mexico, peeked 40 kilometers under Mount St. Helens. That’s where the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate releases fluids due to intense heat and pressure as it descends beneath the North American plate. Those fluids rise and trigger melting in the rock above, fueling an arc of volcanoes that line up like lights on a runway. All except for Mount St. Helens, which stands apart about 50 kilometers to the west. Still, Hansen and colleagues expected to see a heat source under Mount St. Helens, as seen at other volcanoes.
Instead, thermal modeling revealed a wedge of a rock called serpentinite that’s too cool to be a volcano’s source of heat, the researchers report November 1 in Nature Communications. “This hasn’t really been seen below any active arc volcanoes before,” Hansen says.

This odd discovery helps show what the local crust-mantle boundary looks like, but raises another burning question: Where is Mount St. Helens’ heat source? Somewhere to the east, suggests Hansen. Exactly where, or how it reaches the volcano, remains a cold case.

Editor’s Note: this article was revised on January 4, 2017, to note how the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate fuels the chain of volcanoes.

Astronomers have caught a star exploding just hours after light from the eruption first reached Earth. Measurements of the blast’s light suggest that the star rapidly belched gas in the run-up to its demise. That would be surprising — most scientists think the first outward sign of a supernova is the explosion itself.

“Several years ago, to catch a supernova early would mean to detect it at several days, a week, or maybe more, after the explosion,” says astrophysicist Ofer Yaron of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. Now, he says, “we talk about day one.” Although previous supernovas have been seen this early, the new observation is the earliest one with a spectrum — an accounting of the emitted light broken up by wavelength — taken six hours after the explosion, Yaron and colleagues report online February 13 in Nature Physics.
Astronomers observed the explosion — a type 2 supernova, triggered by the collapse of a dying star (SN: 2/18/17, p.24) — with the Intermediate Palomar Transient Factory, which surveys the sky on a regular basis using a telescope at the Palomar Observatory, near San Diego. The supernova appeared on October 6, 2013, in the galaxy NGC7610, 166 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus.

Spectra taken at several intervals after the explosion painted a picture of the aftermath. A shock wave from the supernova plowed through gas surrounding the star, stripping electrons from atoms, which later recombined, emitting certain wavelengths of light in the process. Those wavelengths showed up in the spectra, allowing scientists to deduce what had occurred. The gas had been emitted just before the explosion — within the previous year or so — they concluded.

“This is actually very exciting if you ask me,” says astrophysicist Matteo Cantiello of the Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York City, who was not involved with the research. For typical stars on the brink of collapse, he says, “this is the first clear evidence that … the last period of their lives is not quiet.” Instead, dying stars may become unstable, rapidly spurting out material.

“That’s very, very odd,” says astrophysicist Peter Garnavich of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Scientists typically assume that the outer layers of such stars are detached from the internal processes which trigger the collapse, Garnavich says. How an oncoming collapse could provoke eruptions preceding the explosion is unknown.

Certain stealthy spacetime curiosities might be less hidden than thought, potentially exposing themselves to observers in some curved universes.

These oddities, known as singularities, are points in space where the standard laws of physics break down. Found at the centers of black holes, singularities are generally expected to be hidden from view, shielding the universe from their problematic properties. Now, scientists report in the May 5 Physical Review Letters that a singularity could be revealed in a hypothetical, saddle-shaped universe.
Previously, scientists found that singularities might not be concealed in hypothetical universes with more than three spatial dimensions. The new result marks the first time the possibility of such a “naked” singularity has been demonstrated in a three-dimensional universe. “That’s extremely important,” says physicist Gary Horowitz of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Horowitz, who was not involved with the new study, has conducted previous research that implied that a naked singularity could probably appear in such saddle-shaped universes.

In Einstein’s theory of gravity, the general theory of relativity, spacetime itself can be curved (SN: 10/17/15, p. 16). Massive objects such as stars bend the fabric of space, causing planets to orbit around them. A singularity occurs when the warping is so extreme that the equations of general relativity become nonsensical — as occurs in the center of a black hole. But black holes’ singularities are hidden by an event horizon, which encompasses a region around the singularity from which light can’t escape. The cosmic censorship conjecture, put forth in 1969 by mathematician and physicist Roger Penrose, proposes that all singularities will be similarly cloaked.

According to general relativity, hypothetical universes can take on various shapes. The known universe is nearly flat on large scales, meaning that the rules of standard textbook geometry apply and light travels in a straight line. But in universes that are curved, those rules go out the window. To demonstrate the violation of cosmic censorship, the researchers started with a curved geometry known as anti-de Sitter space, which is warped such that a light beam sent out into space will eventually return to the spot it came from. The researchers deformed the boundaries of this curved spacetime and observed that a region formed in which the curvature increased over time to arbitrarily large values, producing a naked singularity.

“I was very surprised,” says physicist Jorge Santos of the University of Cambridge, a coauthor of the study. “I always thought that gravity would somehow find a way” to maintain cosmic censorship.

Scientists have previously shown that cosmic censorship could be violated if a universe’s conditions were precisely arranged to conspire to produce a naked singularity. But the researchers’ new result is more general. “There’s nothing finely tuned or unnatural about their starting point,” says physicist Ruth Gregory of Durham University in England. That, she says, is “really interesting.”
But, Horowitz notes, there is a caveat. Because the violation occurs in a curved universe, not a flat one, the result “is not yet a completely convincing counterexample to the original idea.”

Despite the reliance on a curved universe, the result does have broader implications. That’s because gravity in anti-de Sitter space is thought to have connections to other theories. The physics of gravity in anti-de Sitter space seems to parallel that of some types of particle physics theories, set in fewer dimensions. So cosmic censorship violation in this realm could have consequences for seemingly unrelated ideas.