Can i has gravity

Because he was taking a very different approach from Newton, Einstein had to use a different kind of mathematics, one that he himself initially knew little about: the mathematics of curved space. And he had to take into account various secondary effects which Newton had no reason to suspect existed, such as the surprising discovery that gravity has an effect on itself. Absolutely not. His mathematics tell us nothing about how gravity works, but as a description of the behaviour of everyday things, it worked very well — and still does.

What Einstein did was to help us understand what causes the force we describe as gravity. In these cases, we have to bring in Einstein to get a more accurate figure.

This was first observed with light passing close to the Sun during a total eclipse in , and has since been seen when distant galaxies act like lenses, bending the path of light behind them. Equally, an experiment called Gravity Probe B has demonstrated that a rotating massive body drags space-time around with it like a rotating spoon in honey, just as Einstein had foreseen.

Later, it was realised that some ageing stars would be unable to resist the pull of gravity and should collapse in on themselves to form such a point, creating a black hole. The gravity in a black hole is so strong that not even light can escape.

Similarly, General Relativity predicted that the very fabric of the Universe could expand and contract. Combined with observations, this has become the basis for our best theory on how the Universe developed: the Big Bang model.

It is also General Relativity that could shed light on dark energy — the mysterious phenomenon that seems to be accelerating the expansion of the Universe. A body with mass warps space and time, so if that body accelerates through space it should cause ripples in the space-time around it. Yet general relativity is remarkable in that it predicts its very own fall.

General relativity yields the predictions of black holes and the Big Bang at the origin of our universe. As one approaches the singularity at the center of a black hole, or the Big Bang singularity, the predictions inferred from general relativity stop providing the correct answers. A more fundamental, underlying description of space and time ought to take over. If we uncover this new layer of physics, we may be able to achieve a new understanding of space and time themselves.

If gravity were any other force of nature, we could hope to probe it more deeply by engineering experiments capable of reaching ever-greater energies and smaller distances. But gravity is no ordinary force.

Try to push it into unveiling its secrets past a certain point, and the experimental apparatus itself will collapse into a black hole. Daniel Harlow , a quantum gravity theorist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is known for applying quantum information theory to the study of gravity and black holes:. Black holes can only be a consequence of gravity because gravity is the only force that is felt by all kinds of matter. This constraint is not relevant in everyday situations, but it becomes essential if you try to construct an experiment to measure the quantum mechanical properties of gravity.

Locality is important to the way we currently describe particles and their interactions because it preserves causal relationships: If the degrees of freedom here in Cambridge, Massachusetts, depended on the degrees of freedom in San Francisco, we may be able to use this dependence to achieve instantaneous communication between the two cities or even to send information backward in time, leading to possible violations of causality.

The hypothesis of locality has been tested very well in ordinary settings, and it may seem natural to assume that it extends to the very short distances that are relevant for quantum gravity these distances are small because gravity is so much weaker than the other forces.

To confirm that locality persists at those distance scales, we need to build an apparatus capable of testing the independence of degrees of freedom separated by such small distances.

Therefore, experiments confirming locality at this scale are not possible. And quantum gravity therefore has no need to respect locality at such length scales. Indeed, our understanding of black holes so far suggests that any theory of quantum gravity should have substantially fewer degrees of freedom than we would expect based on experience with the other forces.

Juan Maldacena , a quantum gravity theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, is best known for discovering a hologram-like relationship between gravity and quantum mechanics:. Gravity mysteries: Will we ever have a quantum theory of gravity? Bridging the gap between quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity might help tie gravity into the equation Read more.

New kind of light is a vortex beam that twists faster as it moves A laser beam can be twisted and move like a vortex, and for the first Mars meteorite assault stopped million years earlier than thought The Late Heavy Bombardment may have stopped on Mars 4.

Quantum leaps are real — and now we can control them Quantum leaps are generally assumed to be instantaneous, but researche Human reproduction differs dramatically even from that of other primates, and none of the organisms studied so far are effective surrogates, says Nodler, a reproductive endocrinologist who specializes in assisted reproductive technologies. Performing that first experiment is technically simple enough, although mired in potential ethical snags.

And while studying the precise effects of a space environment on human embryos is more difficult, it could feasibly be done today, except for an even bigger pile of moral and ethical snags.

For example, scientists could send human sperm and eggs to the International Space Station and attempt in vitro fertilization to see if it would even work, and then compare how many embryos were produced compared to controls on Earth. Scientists could also send already fertilized embryos to the ISS and look at how the space environment affects development, DNA damage, and repair.

This could be done, Nodler says, with embryos that already have no chance of developing normally—which might remove some of the ethical challenges—but the real test would be to look at the effects of spaceflight on viable embryos. The problem is getting someone to let me use them for scientific research. All rights reserved. On September 28, , Musk's gamble paid off when the Falcon 1 became the first privately developed liquid-fuel rocket to orbit Earth.

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