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