Black Hole Spin
Scottish Country Dance Instruction
Black Hole Spin (S4x32) 32 bar Strathspey for four couples, Devised By Alison Mitchell1-4 Second and third couples turn partner once round with both hands.
5-6 Second and third men and ladies turn right hand halfway on the side.
7-8 Second and third couples set on the sides.
9-12 All turn partner once round with both hands, finishing on the sidelines.
13-14 First lady casts off one place, whilst second man dances in and down one place. 3rd lady and 4th man step up.
15-16 All turn right hand once round on the sides; 3rd and 1st ladies, 2nd and 4th ladies, 1st and 3rd men and 4th and 2nd men (to 3124 on the ladies' side and 1342 on the men's side).
17-20 Middle four people (3rd and 4th men, 1st and 2nd ladies) dance a circle to the left approx. three-quarters round and start to dance out (either top, bottom or sidelines).
21-22 Middle people dance out around corners:
1st lady dances out the top of the set and casts around 3rd lady to ladies' side;
2nd lady dances out the ladies' side and casts around 4th lady to bottom of the set;
3rd man dances out the men's side and casts around 1st man to top of the set;
4th man dances out the bottom of the set and casts around 2nd man to men's side.
23-24 All turn corner person (around whom they have just cast) once round by the right hand; 3rd and 1st men, 4th and 2nd men, 1st and 3rd ladies and 4th and 2nd ladies. 3rd man staying at the top of the set between 1st man and 3rd lady; 2nd lady staying at the bottom of the set between 2nd man and 4th lady.
25-30 Eight hands round in a circle to the left to new places (3142).
31-32 All set on the sidelines.
(Dance crib compiled by the deviser, Alison Mitchell, Creative Commons Attribution - NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, March 2018)
Keith Rose's Crib Diagrams
Dance Information
This dance was devised in honour of Stephen Hawking, who passed away aged 76 on 14th March 2018.The gradually increasing number and size of circles, from two people to four people to eight, is intended to represent the increasing size of black holes over time as they merge together.
The casting out of the circle is intended to represent Hawking radiation; pair production near to a black hole event horizon (pairs turn), can lead to one particle falling into the black hole (one of each pair forms a circle), the other particle free to radiate out (dance out and cast).
In this way, energy is lost from a black hole and they can evaporate over time (circle disperses).
The general motion of the dance is (almost) continually in the same direction, reminiscent of the conserved angular momentum/spin properties of a black hole.
(Dance information by the deviser, Alison Mitchell, Creative Commons Attribution - NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, March 2018)
Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA (8 January 1942 - 14 March 2018) was an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. Between 1979 and 2009, he was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, widely viewed as one of the most prestigious academic posts in the world.
Hawking was born in Oxford into a family of physicians. In October 1959, at the age of 17, he began his university education at University College, Oxford, where he received a first-class BA degree in physics. In October 1962, he began his graduate work at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where, in March 1966, he obtained his PhD degree in applied mathematics and theoretical physics, specialising in general relativity and cosmology.
Hawking's scientific contributions included his collaboration with Roger Penrose on gravitational singularity theorems within the framework of general relativity and his theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, now known as Hawking radiation. Initially, this prediction was controversial, but by the late 1970s, further research led to its widespread acceptance as a major breakthrough in theoretical physics. Hawking was also the first to propose a cosmological theory that unified the general theory of relativity with quantum mechanics. Additionally, he was a strong advocate of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA, c. 1980
A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light and other electromagnetic waves, is capable of possessing enough energy to escape it. Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole. The boundary of no escape is called the event horizon. A black hole has a great effect on the fate and circumstances of an object crossing it, but it has no locally detectable features according to general relativity.
A rotating black hole is a black hole that possesses angular momentum. In particular, it rotates about one of its axes of symmetry.
All celestial objects, including planets, stars like the Sun, galaxies, and black holes, spin. There are four known, exact, black hole solutions to the Einstein field equations, which describe gravity in general relativity. Two of those rotate: the Kerr and Kerr–Newman black holes.
It is generally believed that every black hole decays rapidly to a stable black hole; and, by the no-hair theorem, that (except for quantum fluctuations) stable black holes can be completely described at any moment in time by these 11 numbers:
linear momentum P (three components),
angular momentum J (three components),
position X (three components),
electric charge Q.
These numbers represent the conserved attributes of an object which can be determined from a distance by examining its electromagnetic and gravitational fields. All other variations in the black hole will either escape to infinity or be swallowed up by the black hole.
This is because anything happening inside the black hole horizon cannot affect events outside of it.

Ergosphere And Event Horizon Of A Rotating Black Hole
Published in Black Hole Spin, reproduced here under this Creative Commons Attribution - NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
This page contains both original content, which is copyrighted, and excerpts from Wikipedia and other sources using the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Text from this original Stephen Hawking article on Wikipedia.
Text from this original Black Hole Properties And Structure article on Wikipedia.
Text from this original Rotating Black Hole article on Wikipedia.
Upper image from (cropped) NASA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Lower image copyright Yukterez (Simon Tyran, Vienna), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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