General relativity

Despite keeping us grounded and warping light that travels through space, gravity is actually quite a weak force. The smaller the mass, the less gravity appears to have any pull, until at quantum scales it appears to have no force at all.Dave Bautista Opens Up About His Relationship With Denis VilleneuveNow, physicists in England and Europe have measured a tiny—but apparent—gravitational pull on a minuscule mass, making it the smallest mass to yet show the signs of gravity, a force that has perplexed physicists for…

If you asked an astrophysicist what is yet to be discovered in the universe, there’s a good chance they’d paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld: It’s full of known unknowns. What Drew Noomi Rapace to Constellation?Besides the regular matter and energy we know and love, the universe is also composed of two big mysteries: dark energy and dark matter. Theoretical astrophysicists aim to tackle these unknowns by mathematically dreaming up objects that could address the gaps in our knowledge. Thus, in research published in Classical and…

According to findings by physicists at Goethe University Frankfurt, a gravastar could look like a matryoshka doll. Credit: Daniel Jampolski and Luciano Rezzolla, Goethe University Frankfurt, editedPhysicists at Goethe University Frankfurt find new solution to Einstein’s general theory of relativity.If gravitational condensate stars (or gravastars) actually existed, they would look similar to black holes to a distant observer. Two theoretical physicists at Goethe University Frankfurt have now found a new solution to Albert…

Stay calm, everybody stay calm. But it’s finally happening: The European Space Agency is committing itself to the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a gravitational wave observatory that will study some of the universe’s most enigmatic phenomena.Alex Winter on the Most Important Modern Horror Movie On Thursday, LISA was formally adopted, meaning that ESA “recognizes that the mission concept and technology are sufficiently advanced,” according to an agency release, and construction on the observatory can officially…

A team of scientists found a compact object 40,000 light-years from Earth that is either a very massive neutron star or an itsy-bitsy black hole, but they’re not sure which.Remake this Sci-Fi Film with Peter Capaldi!The so-called mass gap object has a mass between 2.09 and 2.71 times that of our Sun. For a neutron star—the collapsed, superdense core of a star—that would be huge, perhaps even the largest yet known. But for a black hole—an even more compact object, so dense that not even light can escape it—it would be…

Einstein’s general relativity explains gravity as the result of spacetime curvature due to mass, contrasting with magnetism’s dual ability to attract and repel. This theory introduces the concept of gravity wells, central to understanding gravitational pull. Credit: SciTechDaily.comWhy does gravity pull us down and not up?Gravity is the reason things with mass or energy are attracted to each other. It is why apples fall toward the ground and planets orbit stars.Magnets attract some types of metals, but they can also push…

Princeton researchers have found that the M87* black hole expels energy outward, contributing to the formation of massive jets. This discovery, rooted in Einstein’s theory of relativity, challenges traditional views of black holes and could be further tested with advanced telescopes. The study opens new avenues in understanding black hole dynamics, though it stops short of definitively explaining the source of the jets’ power. Credit: SciTechDaily.com A team of Princeton astrophysicists has now determined conclusively…

Maura McLaughlin, co-director of NANOGrav, the research collaboration that published the results in The Astrophysical Journal Letters said that “It’s really the first time that we have evidence of just this large-scale motion of everything in the universe."  As per NASA, Gravitational waves are invisible, however, are incredibly fast. They travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second). They squeeze and stretch anything in their path as they pass by.…

A team of astrophysicists has determined through simulations that the debris shed by dying stars may be a source of gravitational waves—those ripples in spacetime predicted by Einstein over a century ago.First Full-Color Images From Webb Space TelescopeGravitational waves are predicted by the general theory of relativity; they are ripples in spacetime generated by massive accelerating objects. The waves are also produced by the interactions of such objects, like binaries of and mergers between neutron stars and black…

After a prolonged absence from the gravitational-wave-detection scene, the massive LIGO project is back up and running.First Full-Color Images From Webb Space TelescopeThe Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) works in conjunction with the Virgo detector in Italy and the KAGRA detector in Japan to suss out gravitational waves—perturbations in the fabric of spacetime caused by interactions of massive objects.The collaboration made monumental news in 2016 when it first made a gravitational wave…