Black Space Research Articles

Inquiry for Social Transformation: Black Mother Scholars Redefining Scholarly Inquiry Through Black Artistic Expression

Writing, dancing, drawing, spittin’ rhymes, and other artistic expressions have long offered us, Black mother scholars, opportunities to reaffirm our humanity amid oppression (Fearon, 2023). Art offers Black mother scholars space to reconceptualise inquiry in ways that engage our families, challenge injustices, and usher social change within the educational milieu and beyond. The centring of Black artistic expression in educational research invites Black mother scholars to affirm the parts of ourselves, our families, and our communities that dominant forms of inquiry and anti-Blackness have sought to discredit. Educational research grounded in Black artistic expression compels us all to reimagine scholarly inquiry for social transformation. In this paper, I critically reflect on an arts-informed research study I led with a group of Black Canadian mothers who are adult literacy learners. In this reflexive piece, I explore how grounding research practices in Black art allows opportunities for storytelling, story listening, and Black refusal. Specifically, this paper explores the ways Black art supports researchers in addressing power differentials inherent in inquiry processes. The paper concludes with a series of reflective questions challenging scholars, especially Black mother scholars, to redefine traditional academic boundaries and recommit to social transformation through the arts.

Entanglement and Generalized Berry Geometrical Phases in Quantum Gravity

A new formalism is introduced that makes it possible to elucidate the physical and geometric content of quantum space–time. It is based on the Minimum Group Representation Principle (MGRP). Within this framework, new results for entanglement and geometrical/topological phases are found and implemented in cosmological and black hole space–times. Our main results here are as follows: (i) We find the Berry phases for inflation and for the cosmological perturbations and express them in terms of the observables, such as the spectral scalar and tensor indices, nS and nT, and the tensor-to-scalar ratio r. The Berry phase for de Sitter inflation is imaginary with the sign describing the exponential acceleration. (ii) The pure entangled states in the minimum group (metaplectic) Mp(n) representation for quantum de Sitter space–time and black holes are found. (iii) For entanglement, the relation between the Schmidt type representation and the physical states of the Mp(n) group is found: This is a new non-diagonal coherent state representation complementary to the known Sudarshan diagonal one. (iv) Mean value generators of Mp(2) are related to the adiabatic invariant and topological charge of the space–time, (matrix element of the transition −∞<t<∞). (v) The basic even and odd n-sectors of the Hilbert space are intrinsic to the quantum space–time and its discrete levels (in particular, continuum for n→∞), they do not require any extrinsic generation process such as the standard Schrodinger cat states, and are entangled. (vi) The gravity or cosmological on one side and another of the Planck scale are entangled. Examples: The quantum primordial trans-Planckian de Sitter vacuum and the classical late de Sitter vacuum today; the central quantum gravity region and the external classical gravity region of black holes. The classical and quantum dual gravity regions of the space–time are entangled. (vii) The general classical-quantum gravity duality is associated with the Metaplectic Mp(n) group symmetry which provides the complete full covering of the phase space and of the quantum space–time mapped from it.

Accretion mechanism for regular black holes with asymptotically Minkowski Cores and improved Schwarzschild black holes

In this paper, we investigate the fascinating implications of the accretion process for two different kinds of black holes. A detailed analysis of the moving fluid in this accretion process is provided. The radial velocity u(r), the energy density ρ(r), speed of sound a2s and the mass accretion rate Ṁ of the regular black holes and improved Schwarzschild black hole are explored. Interestingly, we consider the most generic black hole space–times with isotropic fluid for this accretion process. The required and necessary physical behaviors around the black holes, such as the radial velocity, the energy density of the moving fluid within the scope of dust, stiff fluid and quintessence, are achieved. Our findings suggest that critical parameters like l in regular black holes, Γ in improved Schwarzschild black holes and the state parameter k are responsible for the accretion mechanism.

Gun violence rhetoric in Milwaukee: racialized violence and the creation of urban space

ABSTRACT Gun violence is a widespread problem in the United States. Using the case study of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, we analyze gun violence stories shared through the public humanities project, Voices of Gun Violence. We argue that the rhetoric of gun violence in Milwaukee helps constitute and naturalize racialized spatial imaginaries in ways that are imbricated in people’s daily lives. Through critically engaging stories of gun violence, we find that gun violence often constructs Black space as inherently dangerous and reinforces racialized containment. However, we argue there are possibilities for resistant Black spatial imaginaries.

Study on the Application of Kramers-Kronig Relation for Polyurethane Mixture.

Polyurethane (PU) mixture, which is a new pavement mixture, exhibits different dynamic properties compared to a hot-mixed asphalt mixture (HMA). This paper analyzed whether the Kramers-Kronig (K-K) relation and thermorheologically simple properties applied to the PU mixture. Based on the results, the PU mixture exhibited thermorheologically simple properties within the test conditions. The time-temperature superposition principle (TTSP) was applicable for the PU mixture to construct a dynamic modulus master curve using the standard logistic sigmoidal (SLS) model, the generalized logistic sigmoidal (GLS) model, and the Havriliak-Negami (HN) model. The Hilbert integral transformed SLS and GLS models for the phase angle can accurately fit the measured phase angle data with newly fitted shift factors and predict the phase angle within the viscoelastic range. The core-core and black space diagrams both displayed single continuous smooth curves, which can be utilized to characterize the viscoelastic property of the PU mixture. The K-K relation is applicable for the PU mixture to obtain the phase angle master curve model, storage modulus, and loss modulus from the complex modulus test results with the test temperatures and loading frequencies. The phase angle of the PU mixture at extremely high or low test temperatures cannot be derived from the dynamic modulus data.

Astrophysical and relativistic modeling of the recoiling black hole candidate in quasar 3C 186

The compact object in quasar 3C 186 is one of the most promising recoiling black hole candidates, exhibiting both an astrometric displacement between the quasar and the host galaxy as well as a spectroscopic shift between broad and narrow lines. 3C 186 also presents a radio jet that, when projected onto the plane of the sky, appears to be perpendicular to the quasar-galaxy displacement. Assuming a gravitational-wave kick is indeed responsible for the properties of 3C 186 and using state-of-the-art relativistic modeling, we show that current observations allow for exquisite modeling of the recoiling black hole. Most notably, we find that the kick velocity and the black hole spin are almost collinear with the line of sight and the two former vectors appear perpendicular to each other only because of a strong projection effect. The targeted configuration requires substantial fine-tuning: while there is a region in the black hole binary parameter space that is compatible with 3C 186, the observed system appears to be a rare occurrence. Using archival radio observations, we explored different strategies that could potentially confirm or rule out our interpretation. In particular, we developed two observational tests that rely on the brightness ratio between the approaching and receding jet as well as the asymmetry of the jet lobes. While the available radio data provide loose constraints, deeper observations have the unique potential of unveiling the nature of 3C 186.

Hot spaces with positive cosmological constant in the canonical ensemble: de Sitter solution, Schwarzschild–de Sitter black hole, and Nariai universe

In a space with fixed positive cosmological constant Λ, we consider a system with a black hole surrounded by a heat reservoir at radius R and fixed temperature T, i.e., we analyze the Schwarzschild–de Sitter black hole space in a cavity. We use results from the Euclidean path integral approach to quantum gravity to study, in a semiclassical approximation, the corresponding canonical ensemble and its thermodynamics. We give the action for the Schwarzschild–de Sitter black hole space and calculate expressions for the thermodynamic energy, entropy, temperature, and heat capacity. The reservoir radius R gauges the other scales. Thus, the temperature T, the cosmological constant Λ, the black hole horizon radius r+, and the cosmological horizon radius rc, are gauged to RT, ΛR2, r+R, and rcR. The whole extension of ΛR2, 0≤ΛR2≤3, can be split into three ranges. The first range, 0≤ΛR2<1, includes York’s pure Schwarzschild black holes. The other values of ΛR2 within this range also have black holes. The second range, ΛR2=1, opens up a folder containing Nariai universes, rather than black holes. The third range, 1<ΛR2≤3, is unusual. One striking feature here is that it interchanges the cosmological horizon with the black hole horizon. The end of this range, ΛR2=3, only existing for infinite temperature, represents a cavity filled with de Sitter space inside, except for a black hole with zero radius, i.e., a singularity, and with the cosmological horizon coinciding with the reservoir radius. For the three ranges, for sufficiently low temperatures, which for quantum systems involving gravitational fields can be very high when compared to normal scales, there are no black hole solutions and no Nariai universes, and the space inside the reservoir is hot de Sitter. The limiting value RT that divides the nonexistence from existence of black holes or Nariai universes, depends on the value of ΛR2. For each ΛR2 different from one, for sufficiently high temperatures there are two black holes, one small and thermodynamically unstable, and one large and stable. For ΛR2=1, for any sufficiently high temperature there is the small unstable black hole, and the neutrally stable hot Nariai universe. Phase transitions can be analyzed, the dominant phase has the least action. The transitions are between Schwarzschild-de Sitter black hole and hot de Sitter phases and between Nariai and hot de Sitter. For small cosmological constant, the action for the stable black hole equals the pure de Sitter action at a certain black hole radius and temperature, and so the phases coexist equally. For 0<ΛR2<1 the equal action black hole radius is smaller than the Buchdahl radius, the radius for total collapse, and the corresponding Buchdahl temperature is greater than the equal action temperature. So above the Buchdahl temperature, the system collapses and the phase is constituted by a black hole. For ΛR2≥1 a phase analysis is also made. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Turkish Balance, or Türkiye’s Foreign Policy Strategy in the Black Sea Region Following the Special Military Operation

The Black Sea region in its various geopolitical configurations is a zone of priority for the Turkish elite. Prior to the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774), the Black Sea was regarded as the “Sultan’s harem.” Being essentially a peninsula between the Mediterranean and Black Sea, Türkiye is interested in maintaining control over the Black Sea space or in sharing it with another strong power having access to it. The authors aim to identify and explore Türkiye’s foreign policy strategy in relation to the Black Sea region as one of the key geopolitical spaces for Ankara’s national interests. The foreign policy strategy is understood as a long-term mechanism of the subject in relation to objects and competing subjects, which aims to achieve the most favorable spatial position with the help of military and non-military means and appropriate resources, taking into account the timeliness factor. The article solves specific tasks: it identifies the stable characteristics of Turkish foreign policy, shaped by historical experience and geography, which underlie Ankara’s foreign policy strategy; it shows and studies the strategic vision of the Turkish elite in relation to the Black Sea region; it reveals the mechanisms of influence of external geopolitical subjects on the region and the combination of these mechanisms with Turkish national interests. The concept of Turkish balance is introduced as mechanism of Türkiye’s foreign policy strategy whose main purpose is to integrate stronger powers into the logic and algorithms of foreign policy balances of stronger powers with their mutual opposition and further balancing act, which allows Türkiye to receive maximum geo-economic and geopolitical dividends. The research methodology is represented by systemic, geopolitical and civilizational approaches. Given the role of the Black Sea region in the military-political dynamics since February 2022, the mechanisms of Türkiye’s foreign policy strategy in relation to the region are becoming crucial for Russia in various areas of national security. Authors propagate that February 2022 is the inertia of the events of March 2014 and deeper, of the postponed crisis of 1991 caused by the disintegration of the USSR. However, it was the beginning of the special military operation that brought the military and political confrontation at the global and regional levels into the format of open confrontation. Russia has challenged the West and its system of allies.

Here Comes the Hurricane

This two-section article and interview with Jesús Hilario-Reyes, a queer, non-binary, Afro-Caribbean artist, explores their artwork to connect trans new media histories to contemporary trans Chicanx scholarship via recent notions on “glitch” and “stitch.” The introduction connects Hilario-Reyes’s uprootedness to trans thoughts on “the cut” and trans Chicanx scholar Francisco Galarte’s concept of “Brown transfiguration.” In Section One, Hilario-Reyes discusses their new media practices in relation to land, water, displacement, and diasporic disembodiment. The interview in Section One reveals their experiences with migration, as they reflect on their 3D animated work about Puerto Rico's post-Hurricane Maria flooding, and their role as a DJ creating queer Black space. Section Two delves deeper into their 3D art and music as a healing response to displacement, mourning, and “destierro” (being ripped from one's homeland). Hilario-Reyes’s creativity, expressed through 3D animations, performance, and sound, becomes an embodied and world-building practice infused with resistance and queer Black sovereignty. Their perspectives on "glitch, love, and storms" offer adjacent strategies to resistance optics, addressing the visibility/invisibility dynamics inherent in transphobia and white supremacy. Their understanding of climate change's white supremacist root cause affecting Puerto Rico leads to a transformation of the disembodying effects of systemic violence through trans and Black-informed gestures. Through Hilario-Reyes’s 3D animations and video games, the article connects their work to larger trans scholarship, new media, and trans video game histories. Embodying non-binary and Afro-Caribbean thought, Hilario-Reyes re-engages the body, love, humanness, and their multiple possible selves, turning systemic violence's cataclysmic failures into trans and Afro-Caribbean liberation.

The Importance of a House and the pandemic formation of the ATLFilmParty community

This article discusses the short films of the Atlanta-based black American filmmaker Olamma Oparah. Oparah’s film The Importance of a House was the winner of the inaugural ATLFilmParty (AFP) free film competition and industry networking event created by Brooke Sonenreich in the summer of 2021. Produced and directed in the era of both the COVID-19 pandemic and the aftermath of the US racial reckoning after the murder of George Floyd, The Importance of a House iterates the home as a site of refuge. This article analyses Oparah’s short in the context of two other films she directed in the same period, Laundry Day and No One Heals Without Dying that similarly explore the meaning of home as a black, female, and spiritual space. Using an object-oriented and artist-centered methodology informed by the author’s work with the liquid blackness research group, this article argues that Oparah’s films as texts speak to the contextual needs that AFP meets in fostering a local and independent home for filmmakers in Atlanta facing global Hollywood’s increasingly dominant presence in the city and the region.

“We Know It's a Library”: Black Space, Black Women's Labor, and Radical Black Joy

The Junior Scholars Program (JSP) is a tuition-free youth learning program at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, New York. At JSP, Damaris, a former JSP instructor, was introduced to Kadiatou, the Schomburg Center's former education and outreach programs manager. They write collaboratively to (re)member the dialectical relationship between Black women's labor, Black Space, and Radical Black Joy.

Living in blindness. Houses, atmospheres, and perceptive landscapes through the eyes of some 20th-century masters

Jorge Luis Borges confessed, on more than one occasion, that his modest blindness was not the dramatic darkness that common sense believes but rather a refuge that, in his case, was built in a slow twilight. At the end of his speech to receive the Honoris Causa degree from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Chile, the Argentine writer spoke about the gradual parting of his sight and the pleasant sensation of entering a new, richer, deeper, and more creative living space. Relying on blindness as an introspective landscape, as a habitable space where fantasy meets realism, it is in this context that the essay proposes to inhabit, with thought, a weightless and infinite domestic space. Other artists achieved it - Groussac, Monet, Homer, Joyce, Herzog, Pallasmaa, and Italo Calvino - turning this kind of induced blindness into an intimate and creative room in which to settle at the end of their lives. Professor Yeager introduces this story, making us ascend to the heavens in search of an inspiring, black, and profound space. The house dreamed by Manuel Parra and Danilo Veras leads us away from the light to discover ourselves in a unique sensory experience. From the hand of the master Lewerentz, this essay will bring together some architectural experimentations with a singular dark box, an asphalt and black environment: black box in Lund. Living in blindness suggests a revision of our perceptual field, imaginatively inhabiting these introspective places where laws seem to have disappeared. Blindness, as Borges mentioned in that speech, makes the body join the space to dream of a new, more poetic, and creative dwelling (Figure 1).

Fluctuations in the entropy of Hawking radiation

We use the gravitational path integral (GPI) to compute the fluctuations of the Hawking radiation entropy around the Page curve in a two-dimensional model introduced by Penington Before the Page time, we find that δS=e−S/2, where S is the black hole entropy. This result agrees with the Haar-averaged entropy fluctuations in a bipartite system. After the Page time, we find that δS∼e−S, up to a prefactor that depends logarithmically on the width of the microcanonical energy window. This is not symmetric under exchange of subsystem sizes and so does not agree with the Haar average for a subsystem of fixed Hilbert space dimension. The discrepancy can be attributed to the fact that the black hole Hilbert space dimension is not fixed by the state preparation: even in a microcanonical ensemble with a top-hat smearing function, the GPI yields an additive fluctuation in the number of black hole states. This result, and the fact that the Page curve computed by the GPI is smooth, all point towards an ensemble interpretation of the GPI. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Black Spatial Storylines: Connections of Black Space, Sound and Story as Pedagogy

Black education has interrogated race, context, and power questions, yet these practices spanning geographies and learning contexts have not always been valued as spatial knowledge. Further, Black scholars have carved out spaces that honor the communal and spatial sensibilities of Black students, educators, and communities. Black geographies thought can help us reshape how we understand and interrogate issues within education and learning with attention to anti-blackness, futurities, imagining, placemaking, and efforts to create a sense of belonging despite perpetual unbelongingness in dominant educational and learning spaces. Thus, our piece engages with Black Geographies to emphasize the Black radical traditions of space and freedom-making to reorganize our approaches to pedagogy and storytelling. We engage what we call Black Spatial Storylines through our shared and individual stories. We present multiple vignettes and examples to model the ways Black Sound, particularly hip-hop, invites us to engage Black Spatial Storylines as both methodological and pedagogical techniques that start at Blackness. Not only do we highlight and use our own stories as examples, we detail how this process shifts our understanding of Black urban life, and allows us to reorient our educational praxis through Blackness. We conclude with suggested pathways for future applications of a Black geographies framework to education and learning, including the abundance that is the interweaving of Blackness. Thus, we hope to honor and uplift Black communities’ spatial knowledge by formulating our foundational understandings of Black spatial knowledge and the role it plays in education and learning studies.

Black Words and White Space

This essay analyzes how Cheryl Foggo’s memoir Pourin’ Down Rain contextualizes itself in the recovery of Black space, identity, and story in Canada. An understanding of Black storytelling, founded in Joanne Braxton’s Black Women Writing Autobiography, provides insight into the ways in which Foggo’s memoir fits within a Black storytelling tradition, and how these forms work to disrupt the kind of tradition preserving the ideological space of the “White West.” An analysis of photography and oral storytelling helps explore how Foggo uses alternative narrative techniques to tell a story that challenges dominant perceptions of Blackness and what historical archiving should look like. Finally, this essay deconstructs perceptions of the Canadian West as established by the region’s pre-existing literary canon, and explores how Pourin’ Down Rain opposes these perceptions by challenging some of the common conventions in White prairie narratives.

Effects of Black Holes on the Space-Time Continuum

Black holes are one of nature's greatest mysteries. For years, these celestial bodies have evaded scientists due to their intense gravity and extreme density. A specific area of black hole research that is overlooked is how these cosmic bodies affect the space-time continuum. Developing a complete understanding of space-time in and around black holes is essential for future research relating to black holes and combining the two great theories of this generation: general relativity and quantum mechanics. This paper aims to analyze how the space-time continuum is distorted by black holes and explain the applications that space-time around black holes has to modern physics. It first develops an understanding of space-time linkage and curvature through Einstein’s theories of relativity and presents the geometry of space-time as predicted by Minkowski’s equation. When inside a black hole, space and time essentially trade places so that the flow of time causes matter to be drawn within a black hole. As one explores further toward the centre of a black hole, curvature increases until it is predicted by general relativity to reach a gravitational singularity where density becomes infinite, and the laws of space-time break down. In the paper, the discrepancy between general relativity and quantum mechanics is explored through Hawking Radiation and the theoretical singularity at a black hole's centre. A combination of written explanations, math models, and diagrams are used to communicate how the space-time continuum is affected by black holes.

Quantum corrections on geodesic structure and shadow behavior of the Schwarzschild black hole

Point-like singularities of black hole space–times in general theory of relativity (GR) and alternative theories of gravity are one of the controversial issues for decades. One way to remove the central singularity of the Schwarzschild black hole is the Kazakov–Solodukhin (KS) proposal, which takes into account the effects of quantum field theory within the GR framework leading to the KS black hole. On the other hand, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) becomes a noteworthy tool for constraining the black hole parameters in gravitational theories. Hence, in this work, we plan to study the null geodesic structure, shadow behavior, energy emission rate, and deflection angle of the KS black hole. Then, we constrain the quantum correction parameter of the KS black hole via EHT data of the M87* supermassive black hole. We observe that increasing the quantum effects in the KS black hole leads to amplification of the shadow size of the KS black hole.

Some remarks on Hayward black hole surrounded by a cloud of strings

We obtain the metric corresponding to the Hayward black hole space–time surrounded by a cloud of strings. The consequences of the cloud of strings on the regularity of the obtained solution, as well as on the energy conditions are analyzed. Also, the horizons, geodesics, effective potential and some aspects of the thermodynamics are investigated. We compare all the obtained results with the ones of the literature corresponding to the Hayward black hole, that is, in a scenario where the cloud of strings is absent.

“Education is a white woman’s world”: theorizing race, gender, and geography in a liberatory Black pedagogical space

ABSTRACT In this Black feminist critical inquiry, I theorize the politics of race, gender, and geography in the context of a liberatory Black pedagogical space located in the United States. Using curated interview and observation data, I position an anti-racist pedagogue as a cartographer who employed method, content, style, and technique to map freedom routes away from schooling, a Dumasian site of suffering for Black students. I paint a narrative portrait that foregrounds sights, sounds, and felt tensions emerging from two manifestations of Black affective networks that constellated in the Black male critical pedagogue’s classroom. Ultimately, I call for attention to the construction of liberatory education spaces created to address the comfort and needs of not only racially minoritized learners but also students who embody sexes, genders, and gender performances marginalized in white-dominant culture. Such pedagogical spaces, I argue, can be a refusal to indulge the ontological, epistemological, and existential project of whiteness.

The chaotic behavior of black holes: Investigating a topological retraction in anti-de Sitter spaces

In some topological universe models, a special type of curved space called the anti-de Sitter (AdS) of black hole space appears. Due to general relativity, this space has negative curvature. Here we present a novel variant of AdS space, known as chaotic AdS black hole space. We investigate the correlation between the folding of chaotic AdS black hole space and its chaotic deformation retract. In order to better understand how objects move in space, we can also use Lagrangian equations to determine the geodesics of the chaotic AdS space, and explore the properties and behavior of this new type of space. This would enable us to focus our attention and efforts better on black hole thermodynamics and quantum gravity. Finally, various types of chaotic quantum retractions in this space are identified, as well as the final limits on chaotic AdS spaces and their extensions to astrophysics. Exploring these ideas has consequently increased our understanding of the complex dynamics of the universe and the potential for developing a theory of quantum gravity that combines the principles of general relativity and quantum mechanics.