general relativity

Third, inference to the best explanation is not just a passionless move in some deduction game. Einstein was not led to his theories of special and general relativity through attention to data alone, as if following some experimental breadcrumbs. His theories were the offspring of his imagination as much as ...

He is perhaps best known for his subsequent work unifying different flavours of string theory, an attempt to move beyond general relativity to a “theory of everything” that unifies all of nature's forces. In a less formal award, a poll of physicists attending a cosmology conference the same year saw him dubbed ...

This feat—a revolution in physics that would supplant Isaac Newton's law of universal gravitation and result in Einstein's theory of general relativity—would require some new ideas. Fortunately, Einstein's friend and collaborator Marcel Grossmann swooped in like a waiter bearing an exotic, appetizing ...

OSWEGO — The SUNY Oswego planetarium will examine “General Relativity, Generally” at 7 p.m. every Sunday during May. Using SUNY Oswego's planetarium, host Richard Frieman of the atmospheric and geological sciences department will explore the fundamentals of general relativity as proposed by ...

When the theory of relativity appeared in the early 1900s, it upended centuries of science and gave physicists a new understanding of space and time. Isaac Newton saw space and time as fixed, but in the new picture provided by special relativity and general relativity they were fluid and malleable.

But according to general relativity, gravity is the result of massive objects like the sun and planets warping spacetime. The warping caused by the sun, Einstein realized, would affect the rotation of each planet's orbit slightly and would be most noticeable for Mercury, since it is closest to the sun. But a smaller ...

His dissertation, “Stability and instability results in general relativity,” provides the first rigorous proof of the instability of Anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetime in the presence of matter. “While the instability of AdS spacetime in the absence of matter remains a challenging open problem, the ideas and techniques ...

Alongside quantum mechanics, a second modern, or post-1900, physical principle that Einstein called “general relativity” emerged. This theory provided a unified description of gravity, describing natural phenomena on a much larger scale than quantum mechanics at the level of orbiting planets and ...

“The existence of quantum [fluctuations] due to gravitational fields has been known since the late 1970s,” explains Carballo-Rubio. But physicists didn't know how to take this effect into account in collapsing stars. Carballo-Rubio derived equations that combine general relativity and quantum mechanics in a ...

Since the formulation of Einstein's theory of general relativity in 1915, every theoretical physicist has been dreaming of reconciling our understanding of the infinitely small world of atoms and particles with that of the infinitely large scale of the cosmos. While the latter is effectively described by Einstein's ...

According to a straightforward interpretation of general relativity, the Big Bang wasn't the start of 'everything'. Taking Einstein's famous equations at face value and making as few assumptions as possible, a team of researchers has rewound the clock on our Universe to find it wouldn't lead to a stopping ...

Now, though, we know that this precession is actually due to the effects of general relativity, as the Sun's mass deforms space-time around it. Mercury rotates on its axis with nearly no tilt whatsoever, meaning the planet experiences no seasons and there are places at the poles where sunlight never touches, ...

In addition to general relativity, Hawking was a leader in the search for extraterrestrial life. He served as a board member of the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, which aims to visit our nearest neighboring star, Alpha Centauri. I was a member of the advisory committee, and now my students characterize the ...

"He dove into the chasm between quantum theory and general relativity and came back with a pearl," says Adam Riess, Nobel Laureate in Physics for his work providing evidence of accelerated universal expansion and a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of astronomy and physics at Johns Hopkins ...

Stephen Hawking's biggest accomplishment shone through both his physics work and his outreach to the public, bridging gaps between things that once seemed incompatible. Whether he was demonstrating that black holes did indeed radiate material or that popular culture could embrace the mysteries of ...

Hawking made his reputation with his study of “singularities,” unimaginable objects predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity. When a star with several times the mass of our sun exhausts its nuclear fuel, it collapses, its matter crushing together with such force that it forms a singularity, an infinitely ...

And that means that black holes eventually evaporate and even explode. The finding was so important because, first off, it provided a clue that one day, quantum mechanics and general relativity could be united into one grand theory. In other words, if quantum mechanics and relativity could come together ...

In 1965, when Dr. Hawking was 23, the British mathematician Roger Penrose proved that if Einstein's theory of gravity, general relativity, was correct there is a point of infinite density — a singularity — at the center of a black hole. In 1970, building on work in Dr. Hawking's doctoral dissertation, he and Dr.

General relativity was meant to supplant Newtonian gravity. This meant it had to explain all the same physical phenomena Newton's equations could, plus other phenomena that Newton's equations couldn't. Yet in mid-1913, Einstein convinced himself, incorrectly, that his new theory couldn't account for ...

According to general relativity, light affected by a strong gravitational field will get stretched out, or redshifted. The orbit will also shift, ever so slightly changing trajectory. As S0-2 moves in for its closest approach at 17 light-hours away from the centre of the galaxy (about four times the distance between the ...

Astronomers are so eager for this close approach because it will serve as yet another stringent test of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. But, until last week, there was a slight sense of unease in the air as astronomers suspected S0-2 was a binary star system like many other S-stars. This would have ...

“General relativity has been the staple of gravitational understanding for 100 years,” says Katie Chamberlain, a physics student at Montana State University. “We have to rule out the potential for other existing theories to come in and replace [it].” Many alternative theories of gravity are out there, designed to ...

Over the last year, however, mathematicians have brought the mathematics of general relativity into sharper focus. Two groups have come up with proofs related to an important problem in general relativity called the black hole stability conjecture. Their work proves that Einstein's equations match a physical ...