relativity

​In 2015, LIGO detected gravitational waves for the first time, by observing tiny wobbles in laser beams, but a newly launched telescope in Spain is aiming to see them more directly, scouring the skies for the optical signals associated with gravitational waves.

Gravity from huge objects like stars can curve spacetime, bending light from its straight path. This can alter how we see distant stars through what's called gravitational lensing, and now astronomers have seen it in action, directly observing a star bend the light of another, more distant star.

The Lambda Cold Dark Matter model suggests that 68 percent of the universe is made up of dark energy. But a new study has questioned whether dark energy exists, citing simulations that found that accounting for the structure of the cosmos, the gap in the theory, which dark energy fills, vanishes.

The question of why time moves forwards, and not backwards, has long been on the minds of physicists. Now, a professor at UC Berkeley has a new theory: as the universe expands, it drives the expansion of time, which creates a constant series of new “now” moments.

New software has been developed that incorporates all the complexities of the equations of Einstein's general theory of relativity to help produce models of the cosmos far more complex and detailed than ever before constructed

Albert Einstein is famous for his theories on relativity, but what of his other grand hypothesis, the unified field theory that consumed the last 30 years of his life without resolution? So will a unified theory of everything ever be realized?

A team at the University of Zurich has developed a means of monitoring volcanic events that could help predict eruptions. The technique uses ground-based atomic clocks and relies on Einstein's theory of general relativity.

A team of astronomers led by the Australian National University (ANU) has discovered a lens of galactic proportions. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, the scientists saw a supernova not once, but four times by using the gravity of a distant cluster of galaxies as a natural lens.

An ESA mission for testing new technologies for understanding the universe has left Britain for final testing. LISA Pathfinder mission's modules left Airbus Defence and Space for IABG in Germany for final tests before shipment to French Guiana, where they will be shot into low-Earth orbit.

Researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California Berkeley have measured what is believed to be the smallest force yet recorded – 42 yoctonewtons, or a septillionth of a newton.