Different measurements of the universe’s expansion yield different results. Are we getting something wrong, or do we need brand-new physics to figure it out?
If you think about the way a gravitational wave detector works, you might encounter a paradox. Here’s the solution.
The three-body problem has vexed mathematicians and physicists for 300 years, but AI can find solutions far faster than any other method anyone has come up with.
A close look at fundamental symmetries has exposed hidden patterns in the universe. Physicists think that those same symmetries may also reveal time’s original secret.
The three-body problem, one of the most notoriously complex calculations in physics, may have met its match in artificial intelligence: a new neural network promises to find solutions up to 100 million times faster than existing techniques.
First formulated by Sir Isaac Newton, the three-body problem involves calculating the movement of three gravitationally interacting bodies – such as the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun, for example – given their initial positions and velocities.
It might sound simple at first, but the ensuing chaotic movement has stumped mathematicians and physicists for hundreds of years, to the extent that all but the most dedicated humans have tried to avoid thinking about it as much as possible.
Wormholes, passageways that connect one universe or time to another, are still only theoretical — but that doesn’t mean physicists aren’t looking for them. In a new study, researchers describe how to find wormholes in the folds of our galaxy.
These hypothetical passageways, created by folding a region of space like a piece of paper, are predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. But they require extreme gravitational conditions, such as those around supermassive black holes.
In the new study, two researchers came up with a method to search for wormholes close to home, around the Milky Way’s central, supermassive black hole, called Sagittarius A*. If a wormhole were to exist around Sagittarius A*, the stars on one side of the passage would be influenced by the gravity of stars on the other side, the researchers said.
Our universe may be riddled with defects in space-time known as cosmic strings. Though we don’t have any evidence yet that they exist, they may still be out there, and I promise that you really don’t want to encounter one.
The atmosphere is fluid. This means it’s subject to fluid dynamics, such as circulation, currents, and, yes, gravity waves. The atmosphere is always in motion, so these phenomena happen all the time; but actually seeing them is another matter.
Well, thanks to weather satellites, now you can take a mighty gawk at atmospheric gravity waves that rippled out over Western Australia last week.
Not to be confused with gravitational waves, which are disturbances in the curvature of spacetime created by massive acceleration, gravity waves, also known as buoyancy waves, are a physical phenomenon where waves are generated in any fluid medium, such as waves at the beach, or ripples in a glass of water.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and new mirror technology confirmed a mystery that could lead to a “new physics,” one astrophysicist said.
Science fiction writers love wormholes because they make the impossible possible, linking otherwise unreachable places together. Enter one, and it’ll spit you back out in another locale—typically one that’s convenient for the plot. And no matter how unlikely these exotic black hole relatives are to exist in reality, they tend to fascinate physicists for exactly the same reason. Recently, some of those physicists took the time to ponder what such a cosmic shortcut might look like in real life, and even make a case that there could be one at the center of our galaxy.
