gravity

The newly observed ripple in spacetime will help us unlock some of the secrets of the Universe.

Astronomers have explained a strange effect observed in the vicinity of black holes.

Why too many bodies present a problem.

A closer look at the power of symmetry in physics.

Finally we can be sure — black holes, those gravitational monsters that gobble up everything that gets too close to them, do exist.

Does light have weight? Newton thought so. His laws predicted that gravity would bend light, two centuries before Einstein's revolution.

Why (some) physicists want to modify Einstein's general theory of relativity.

How to catch those elusive gravitational waves.

Space is the stage on which physics happens. It's unaffected by what happens in it and it would still be there if everything in it disappeared. This is how we learn to think about space at school. But the idea is as novel as it is out-dated.

Cosmologists gathered in the Netherlands last week to discuss a new view of the Universe. The Universe as seen by Planck was an international conference to discuss the recently released scientific results from the Planck satellite, including two particularly striking snapshots of the early Universe.

This is the first part of the lecture given by Astronomer Royal Martin Rees at Stephen Hawking's birthday symposium.

That geometry should be relevant to physics is no surprise — after all, space is the arena in which physics happens. What is surprising, though, is the extent to which the geometry of space actually determines physics and just how exotic the geometric structure of our Universe appears to be. Plus met up with mathematician Shing-Tung Yau to find out more.