Language Works

Going Outside

‘Think outside the box’ sounds a bit hackneyed nowadays. Instead, I like the practice of ‘Box outside the thinking.’ So it was with this idea of breaking the pattern that I sat down on Saturday morning in the National Science Centre’s Auditorium Ibnu Sina.

The topic - ‘ Colourful Black Holes’ - seemed contradictory, cosmic, invitingly curious.

The speaker, Universiti Malaya’s Visiting Professor Hwang Chorng-Yuan from Taiwan, provided an hour of well-explained Cosmology and Astrophysics without going overboard into astral-speak with the content.

Learning takeaways?
- A black hole (BH) is not an object but a separate region of space
- ⁠The most common BH types are stellar mass, and super massive.
- ⁠Intermediate mass types are missing. as most fell into central super massive BHs.

It’s hard for them to survive.

Coming the day after Elon Musk’s ascent to trillionaire status, this further revealed a cosmos favouring the super massive.

Prof Hwang posed the question of how to see BH. Answer? Cannot. We only see the effects it causes. Material falling into BH releases energy, and radiates on many different wavelengths - colourfully.

So I learned that colour comes from the BH environment. More than that, I’d boxed outside the thinking and re-discovered that,
as Hamlet said, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

This year sees the 25th anniversary of the Malaysia Technology Expo (MTE), themed ‘Innovation Nexus: Empowering the Future’.

Great to be able to contribute again as international juror for MTE Public Service Innovation Asia (PSIA) Awards 2026.

Many thanks to the assessor team - MACRI President Hussein Mohd. Ariff and Vista Kencana General Manager Ami Azril Abdullah Awang, as well as the PRoTEMP support team.

MTE 2026 is showcasing public-sector and youth innovations from Asia up until 11 April at KL’s World Trade Centre. And the innovations on show are inspiring.