Lifeboat Foundation

You know what they say about rules…

If you thought regular black holes were about as weird and mysterious as space gets, think again, because for the first time, physicists have successfully simulated what would happen to black holes in a five-dimensional world, and the way they behave could threaten our fundamental understanding of how the Universe works.

The simulation has suggested that if our Universe is made up of five or more dimensions — something that scientists have struggled to confirm or disprove — Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the foundation of modern physics, would be wrong.

Continue reading “A 5-dimensional black hole could break the laws of physics as we know them” »

We don’t live in a world that’s pinning the survival of humanity of Matthew McConaughey’s shoulders, but if it turns out the plot of the 2014 film Interstellar is true, then we live in a world with at least five dimensions. And that would mean that a ring-shaped black hole would, as scientists recently demonstrated, “break down” Einstein’s general theory of relativity. (And to think, the man was just coming off a phenomenal week.)

In a study published in Physical Review Letters, researchers from the UK simulated a black hole in a “5-D” universe shaped like a thin ring (which were first posited by theoretical physicists in 2002). In this universe, the black hole would bulge strangely, with stringy connections that become thinner as time passes. Eventually, those strings pinch off like budding bacteria or water drops off a stream and form miniature black holes of their own.

This is wicked weird stuff, but we haven’t even touched on the most bizarre part. A black hole like this leads to what physicists call a “naked singularity,” where the equations that support general relativity — a foundational block of modern physics — stop making sense.

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#sweet!

Electrons which act like slow-pouring honey have been observed for the first time in graphene, prompting a new approach to fundamental physics.

Electrons are known to move through metals like bullets being reflected only by imperfections, but in graphene they move like in a very viscous liquid, University of Manchester researchers have found.

Continue reading “Scientists discover electrons moving like honey in graphene” »

The 5 Dimensional Black Hole could break the theory of relativity: Simulation suggests strange rings with ‘ultragravity’ that defy physics may exist.

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Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Queen Mary University of London made the discovery after simulating a black hole shaped like a very thin ring using computer models.

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A trio of physicists in Europe has come up with an idea that they believe would allow a person to actually witness entanglement. Valentina Caprara Vivoli, with the University of Geneva, Pavel Sekatski, with the University of Innsbruck and Nicolas Sangouard, with the University of Basel, have together written a paper describing a scenario where a human subject would be able to witness an instance of entanglement—they have uploaded it to the arXiv server for review by others.

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Two astronomers fought for credit when Neptune’s presence was confirmed in 1846: John Couch Adams from Britain, and Urbain Le Verrier from France. Both had used math and physics to predict Neptune’s position, but Le Verrier’s prediction turned out to be more accurate. See references.

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But now it seems that collision may have been followed by a bright burst of gamma rays. NASA’s Fermi gamma-ray space telescope detected such an eruption just 0.4 seconds after LIGO’s gravitational waves arrived at Earth. It’s not clear whether the same event triggered both signals, but the Fermi team calculated that the probability of a coincidence was just 0.0022.

The problem is that no one expected such a bright gamma-ray burst to accompany a black-hole merger. Coalescing black holes orbit each other in a cosmic do-si-do, clearing out a region of empty space. According to models of gamma-ray bursts, isolated black holes can’t ignite them.

Strange signal

Continue reading “LIGO’s black holes may have lived and died inside a huge star” »

Physicists working with a powerful observatory on Earth announced Thursday that they have finally detected ripples in space and time created by two colliding black holes, confirming a prediction made by Albert Einstein 100 years ago.

These ripples in the fabric of space-time, called gravitational waves, were created by the merger of two massive black holes 1.3 billion years ago. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) on Earth detected them on Sept. 14, 2015, and scientists evaluated their findings and put them through the peer review process before publicly disclosing the landmark discovery today.

SEE ALSO: Einstein was right: Scientists detect gravitational waves for the first time.

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Since Albert Einstein first predicted their existence a century ago, physicists have been on the hunt for gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of spacetime. That hunt is now over. Gravitational waves exist, and we’ve found them.

That’s according to researchers at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), who have been holed up for weeks, working round-the-clock to confirm that the very first direct detection of gravitational waves is the real deal. False signals have been detected before, and even though the rumors first reported by Gizmodo have been flying for a month, the LIGO team wanted to be absolutely certain before making an official announcement.

That announcement has just come. Gravitational waves were observed on September 14th, 2015, at 5:51 am ET by both of the LIGO detectors, located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington. The source? A supermassive black hole collision that took place 1.3 billion years ago. When it occurred, about three times the mass of the sun was converted to energy in a fraction of a second.

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