Space-warping white dwarfs produce gravitational waves

(Phys.org)—Gravitational waves, much like the recently discovered Higgs boson, are notoriously difficult to observe. Scientists first detected these ripples in the fabric of space-time indirectly, using radio signals from ...

When dark energy turned on (Update)

(PhysOrg.com) -- Some six billion light years distant, almost halfway from now back to the big bang, the universe was undergoing an elemental change. Held back until then by the mutual gravitational attraction of all the ...

The annihilating effects of space travel

Long distance space travel could create the ultimate 'killer entrance', devastating your destination and anything around the arriving spacecraft, according to calculations by Professor Geraint Lewis and two honours students ...

Gravitational lens reveals details of distant, ancient galaxy

Thanks to the presence of a natural "zoom lens" in space, University of Chicago scientists working with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have obtained a uniquely close-up look at the brightest gravitationally magnified galaxy ...

Pulsars: The Universe's gift to physics

Pulsars, superdense neutron stars, are perhaps the most extraordinary physics laboratories in the Universe. Research on these extreme and exotic objects already has produced two Nobel Prizes. Pulsar researchers now are poised ...

Distorting the lens

(PhysOrg.com) -- One of the most bizarre predictions of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity is the existence of back holes, objects that are so dense that not even light can escape from their gravitational grasp. A related ...

Scientists gear up to take a picture of a black hole

On Wednesday, Jan. 18, astronomers, physicists and scientists from related fields will convene in Tucson, Ariz. from across the world to discuss an endeavor that only a few years ago would have been regarded as nothing less ...

Physicists propose test for loop quantum gravity

(PhysOrg.com) -- As a quantum theory of gravity, loop quantum gravity could potentially solve one of the biggest problems in physics: reconciling general relativity and quantum mechanics. But like all tentative theories of ...

A 40-year-old puzzle of superstring theory solved by supercomputer

A group of three researchers from KEK, Shizuoka University and Osaka University has for the first time revealed the way our universe was born with 3 spatial dimensions from 10-dimensional superstring theory in which spacetime ...

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