“When you throw something into a black hole, information about it gets scrambled and cannot be recovered,” says Goto. “This scrambling is a manifestation of chaos.”
The team came across “magic,” which is a mathematical measure of how difficult a quantum state is to simulate using an ordinary classical (non-quantum) computer. Their calculations showed that in a chaotic system almost any state will evolve into one that is “maximally magical”—the most difficult to simulate.
This provides the first direct link between the quantum property of magic and the chaotic nature of black holes. “This finding suggests that magic is strongly involved in the emergence of spacetime,” says Goto.
We were particularly interested in whether supernatural explanations focused on “natural” phenomena—events that had no clear human cause such as disease, natural disasters and drought—or whether they focused on human-caused “social” phenomena such as wars, murder and theft.
We found explanations for all these various phenomena in our survey. For example, the Cayapa people of the Ecuadorian rainforest attributed lightning, a natural phenomenon, to the Thunder spirit, who carried a large sword that glinted when he used it in combat.
And the Comanche people of the great American plains explained the timing of war, a social phenomenon, using dreams from medicine men.
However, our results also revealed a striking gap: supernatural explanations for natural phenomena were much more prevalent than for social phenomena.
A few years back, photographer Sho Shibata traversed the frozen landscapes of Aomori’s Hakkōda Mountains documenting the otherworldly formations that cover the slopes. Heavy, icy snow cloaks the countless trees that populate the region, morphing the arboreal vistas into frigid hoodoo-like characters. “This is my favourite place to visit when it is cold like this because it transforms into a wonderland,” Shibata says. “When I first saw them, I actually thought there were lots of snowmen. What’s incredible is how they all look so similar. They look like snow monsters, like they are ghosts.”