Curvature
milhayser | March 15, 2016In a validation of Albert Einstein's genius, the power of new technology, and the relevance of the scientific method (even if it takes a century), scientists working on a project called LIGO have witnessed ripples in the fabric of spacetime caused by gravitational waves. First predicted by Einstein in 1916 on the basis of general relativity, gravitational waves are cosmic shock waves that can result from the interactions of massive objects like black holes and neutron stars. Unlike electromagnetic waves, which pass through space, gravitational waves change the shape of space itself. Extremely…
esiegel | May 1, 2013"The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radical. Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality." -Hermann Minkowski
When it comes to gravity, you probably think you understand it pretty well.
Image credit: Heavens Above, via http://heavens-above.com/.
Everything with mass (or energy) attracts everything else with mass-or-energy, explaining everything from falling…
esiegel | July 18, 2012"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." -Stephen Hawking
The Universe is a vast, seemingly unending marvel of existence. Over the past century, we've learned that the Universe stretches out beyond the billions of stars in our Milky Way, out across billions of light years, containing close to a trillion galaxies all told.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team.
And yet, that's just the observable Universe! There are good reasons to believe that the Universe continues on and on beyond the limits of what we can see; the…