Can General Relativity, at 100, Withstand Some Holes?

November 13, 2015 • by Marc Airhart

Answering some of the biggest questions in astrophysics—for example, about black holes and the origin of the universe—might require overhauling general relativity.

Illustration of a black hole

In this artist’s illustration, turbulent winds of gas swirl around a black hole. Some of the gas is spiralling inward towards the black hole, while some is blown away. Credit: NASA and M. Weiss (Chandra X-ray Center)


Black and white portrait of a man with a mustache and unruly white hair

Albert Einstein 1947

Illustration of the evolution of the universe

The evolution of the Universe, starting with the Big Bang. The red arrow marks the flow of time. Credit: Dana Berry (Skyworks Digital)/NASA

An oval of green and blue dots on a black background

The cosmic microwave background. This detailed, all-sky picture of the infant universe at much less than 1 percent of its current age was produced by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). Credit: NASA / WMAP Science Team

Share


Illustration of the Wolf 1130ABC triple system, composed of the red dwarf star Wolf 1130A, its close and compact white dwarf companion Wolf 1130B, and the distant brown dwarf tertiary Wolf 1130C. The three components of this system are shown scaled to their relative sizes. Image credit: Adam Burgasser, UCSD.

McDonald Observatory

A Cosmic Puzzle: Phosphine Found in One Brown Dwarf, Missing in Others

A photo of the dark night sky above greenhouses in West Texas.

McDonald Observatory

Local Properties Keep Stars Bright with Night Sky-Friendly Lighting

The background shows the blackness of space, dotted with colorful stars and galaxies. In a pullout box at the top left, an arrow points to a fuzzy red blob shaped like a jelly bean. A label reads JADES-GS-z14-0.

Research

More Dark Star Candidates Found in JWST Data