Latest Introduction to general relativity Stories
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Recent research from the University of Cardiff has found that the dying tones of black holes reveal the cosmic crash that caused them to form. Black holes are regions of space where gravity is so strong that not even light can escape. Usually, they are the evolutionary ending of stars that were 10 to 15 times larger than our sun. After these stars undergo a supernova event, sometimes the remnant will collapse in on itself, creating a...
New measurements have confirmed Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity after an experiment last week brought the theory into question. Einstein's general theory of relativity says that light emitted from stars and galaxies is slightly tugged by gravity from celestial bodies. Physicists reported last week that neutrinos can travel faster than light, which sent a blow to Einstein's theory of special relativity. The particles in the experiments conducted between the European...
Scientists using a continent-wide array of radio telescopes have made an extremely precise measurement of the curvature of space caused by the Sun's gravity, and their technique promises a major contribution to a frontier area of basic physics."Measuring the curvature of space caused by gravity is one of the most sensitive ways to learn how Einstein's theory of General Relativity relates to quantum physics. Uniting gravity theory with quantum theory is a major goal of 21st-Century...
Does an exciting but controversial new model of quantum gravity reproduce Einstein's theory of general relativity? Scientists at Texas A&M University in the US explore this question in a paper appearing in Physical Review Letters and highlighted with a Viewpoint in the August 24th issue of Physics (http://physics.aps.org)."If it ain't broke, don't fix it," sums up fairly well how many scientists have viewed Einstein's theory of general relativity. The theory, which Einstein...
In 1919, the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) launched an expedition to the West African island of PrÃncipe, to observe a total solar eclipse and prove or disprove Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Now, in a new RAS-funded expedition for the International Year of Astronomy (IYA 2009), scientists are back.Astronomers Professor Pedro Ferreira from the University of Oxford and Dr Richard Massey from the University of Edinburgh, along with Oxford anthropologist Dr Gisa Weszkalnys, are...
The rotating black hole has been described as one of nature's most perfect objects.As described by the Kerr solution of Einstein's gravitational field equations, its spacetime geometry is completely characterized by only two numbers "” mass and spin "” and is sometimes described by the aphorism "black holes have no hair.''A particle orbiting a rotating black hole always conserves its energy and angular momentum, but otherwise traces a complicated twisting rosette pattern with no...
By Anonymous A study of two unequal mass stars in close orbits has produced results in keeping with Einstein's theory of general relativity. "Einstein's theory predicts that stars in such a system will come closer and closer to each other as they lose energy due to gravitational radiation," says Dr Rhamesh Bhat of Swinburne University's Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing. "Previous research has supported Einstein's theory in this context." Such tests are applied quite frequently (AS,...
NASA scientists have reached a breakthrough in computer modeling that allows them to simulate what gravitational waves from merging black holes look like. The three-dimensional simulations, the largest astrophysical calculations ever performed on a NASA supercomputer, provide the foundation to explore the universe in an entirely new way.According to Einstein's math, when two massive black holes merge, all of space jiggles like a bowl of Jell-O as gravitational waves race out from the...
Penn State -- Black holes have a reputation for voraciously eating everything in their immediate neighborhood, but these large gravity wells also affect electromagnetic radiation and may hinder our ability to ever locate the center of the universe, according to an international research team. "Any attempt to discover what was happening a long time ago at the beginning of our universe must take into account what gravitationally assisted negative refraction does to the radiation being...
Latest Introduction to general relativity Reference Libraries
Gravitational Lens -- A gravitational lens is formed when the light from a very distant, bright object (such as a quasar) is "bent" around a massive object (such as a massive galaxy) between the bright object and the viewer. The process is known as gravitational lensing, and was one of the predictions made by Einstein's general relativity. Description In a gravitational lens, the gravity from the massive object bends light as a lens might. As a result, the path of the light from a...
