The cosmos seems to have a preference for things that are round. Planets and stars tend to be spheres because gravity pulls clouds of gas and dust toward the center of mass. The same holds for black holes—or, to be more precise, the event horizons of black holes—which must, according to theory, be spherically shaped in a universe with three dimensions of space and one of time.
But do the same restrictions apply if our universe has higher dimensions, as is sometimes postulated—dimensions we cannot see but whose effects are still palpable? In those settings, are other black hole shapes possible?
The answer to the latter question, mathematics tells us, is
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