A major review reveals how black hole "ringdowns" are becoming powerful tools for testing Einstein's theory, probing dark matter, and uncovering new physics. Think of black holes as bells from the cosmos. When they collide and coalesce, the resulting black hole “rings” like a bell, with vibrations known as quasinormal modes (gravitational-wave frequencies that decay in amplitude during the ‘ringdown’ phas... [2720 chars]