These days the halls of physics are so vast the first problem for those who seek new physics is: Where is one to begin? History shows physics offers signposts of a sort: The path to new physics starts with what is wrong with old physics. At the beginning of the twentieth century only a few […]
Tag Archives: black holes
Could the Universe Have Only Two Dimensions?
It’s strange but true: Physics is now studying the universe as if it is a two-dimensional hologram. How did this come to be? And what does it mean? The 3D/2D duality is known as the holographic principle. Two decades ago American theoretical physicist Leonard Susskind described it this way: ‘In a certain sense the world […]
New Light On the Large-Scale Structure of the Universe Rethinking the origin of supermassive black holes
Quadrillions of galaxies make up some structures in the universe. How did such structures arise? How do the galaxies that they are made of grow? As Winston Churchill said of Russia, this is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Now primordial black holes offer us new hope of an answer. What is […]
The Dark Matter Mystery Is Solved! LIGO’s observations show mid-sized primordial black holes are not improbable.
For years Dark Matter has confronted physics with a massive mystery. A recent article describes it as ‘the invisible substance that astronomers believe accounts for about 80% of the stuff in the universe.’ But what is it? This question has physicists searching for obscure new particles with the world’s largest machine, the Large Hadron Collider. […]
Why Are We Discovering Double Black Holes?
Black holes are in the news again. Only a few weeks ago news of two surprisingly big black holes colliding in a distant galaxy arrived at Earth. Now astronomers have found a closer and far bigger pair of black holes. First the gravity waves. A fantastically sensitive instrument called LIGO measured them as they rolled […]
WIMPed Out?
The mystery of the missing WIMPs is heading for a crisis. It’s looking like the reason we can’t find them is they don’t exist. Most people never heard of them. What is a WIMP? It is Dark Matter by another name. It stands for Weakly Interacting Massive Particle. They must be weakly interacting because no-one’s […]
LIGO’s Tiny Twitch is a Big Deal
It may be the top science story of this century so far (though I hope an even bigger one is coming): Physicists detected gravitational waves; you can hear them here. This discovery has profound implications for the future of cosmology. It will affect our lives in ways we cannot yet conceive. It was a long […]
Trips in Space and Time
Physics has an ongoing obsession with time. Some of the most important discoveries about time have been made with so-called thought experiments. Gedankenexperimenten, as Albert Einstein called them, have advantages. They need not be practical. They use no apparatus. Anyone can play. Many people have heard of the so-called twin paradox. It’s a Gedankenexperiment.You travel […]
India is Looking for New Views of Strange Objects in the Universe
Good news for India and for science: welcome to a new sophisticated telescope called Astrosat. The India Space Research Organization (ISRO) designed and built it. Launched a month ago on India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, it is now in its 400-mile high orbit over the equator. Astrosat has new […]