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Relativity Theory
Scientific surprises are often how science advances. But more often than not, they’re just bad science. When you’re a scientist, getting an unexpected result can be a double-edged sword. The best […]
It’s a pipe dream that violates the laws of physics, and not even quantum mechanics can give us a way out. One of the most fundamental rules of physics, undisputed since […]
Even extremely simple configurations in General Relativity cannot be solved exactly. Here’s the science of why. It’s difficult to appreciate how revolutionary of a transformation it is to consider the Universe […]
It’s been spectacularly confirmed by observation, but theoretically, it couldn’t have been any other way. If the Sun were to spontaneously cease emitting light, we wouldn’t know about it for about […]
You’ve seen a black hole’s event horizon for the first time thanks to them. But they’re only getting started. Earlier this year, 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration revealed the first […]
It’s perhaps the most famous equation of all, with lessons about reality for every one of us. If you’ve ever heard of Albert Einstein, chances are you know at least one […]
Particle physics is everywhere, even in the palm of your hand. When you hold out your palm and point it towards the sky, what is it that’s interacting with your hand? […]
The laws of physics are not time-reversal invariant. Here’s how we know. No matter when, where, or what you are in the Universe, you experience time in only one direction: forwards. […]
If you think nothing can move faster than light, check out this clever way to defeat that limit. Nothing can move faster than the speed of light. When Einstein set forth […]
And why Einstein’s quest for unification was doomed from the start. If you wanted to answer the question of what’s truly fundamental in this Universe, you’d need to investigate matter and […]
A single thought experiment reveals a paradox. Could quantum gravity be the solution? Sometimes, if you want to understand how nature truly works, you need to break things down to […]
If you think you have problems today, be glad you’re not moving at the speed of light. Special relativity, even though it’s over 100 years old, is still one of the […]
Einstein’s explanation is the only one that works. When Newton first proposed the law of universal gravitation, it marked the very first time that we realized the same rule governing how […]
There may be a fundamental reason why time travel, backwards, is impossible. We’ve all had the dream of traveling back in time. Whether there’s a wrong we want to right, […]
On September 27, 1972, scientists performed the first test of Bell’s inequality. God does play dice with the Universe, after all. One of the most puzzling and counterintuitive aspects of quantum […]
If our current laws of physics can’t predict what will happen, even probabilistically, we need something new. There are two theories we have that explain all the particles and their […]
In the search for fundamental truths in our Universe, one of the biggest questions, “are space and time continuous or discrete,” remains unanswered. Throughout the history of science, one of […]
Ever hear of Hawking radiation? Or the black hole information paradox? Time to get your fix! In memory of Stephen Hawking’s life, I’ve decided to share the physics behind his greatest […]
It’s so much more than mass-energy equivalence; it’s the key to unlocking the quantum Universe. For hundreds of years, there was an immutable law of physics that was never challenged: […]
If nothing can escape from beneath the event horizon, where do these phenomena come from? The most important feature of a black hole is that it has an event horizon: a […]
If you think we know it all, you’ll never be ready for the next big breakthrough. When you’re taught the scientific method, you think of a neat procedure you can […]
How the Universe’s expansion rate continues to baffle us. “In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.” –Henry Miller It’s the most fundamental law of special […]
Gravitational waves and electromagnetic ones don’t need to go together. But physics says it’s possible; what do the observations say? “The black holes collide in complete darkness. None of the […]
You might think that it should be all black, but then how would we see it? “It is conceptually interesting, if not astrophysically very important, to calculate the precise apparent shape […]
Sometimes, designing a careful experiment and measuring absolutely no effect can be the most important result of all. “It appears, from all that precedes, reasonably certain that if there be any […]
If Scotty beams you up for a trip around the Sun, here’s how to handle it. “I really didn’t have to work, shall we say, with Star Trek. It was a […]
If we left on New Years Day, how close could we get if we kept accelerating every second of every day? “The very closest stars would require many years to visit, […]
Not faster than 299,792,458 m/s, but faster than light moves through anything other than vacuum! “You are both fools. You cannot see thoughts, or angels. One is an abstract, the other […]
We see them change in wavelength, energy and in their electric and magnetic fields over time. So how do they experience it? “Everyone has his dream; I would like to […]
A correlation between normal matter and the observed rotation suggests that maybe dark matter isn’t a certainty, after all. “Nothing in the standard cosmological model predicts this, and it is almost […]