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practicing physics on the sly and with very little personal interaction with
the scientific establishment at the time this unknown patent clerk in Bern
Switzerland named Albert Einstein wrote five seminal papers in 1905 that
encompassed the whole of the universe from the workings of the atom and out
through space and time during the course of that one year
the brash 26 year old Einstein helped clinch the then controversial case for
the existence of atoms he proposed that light is made of particles of energy and
he began to turn the tables on Isaac Newton's laws of motion laws revered for
more than 200 years he said that space and time were
relative depending on one's frame of reference traveling at light speed time
slows down so that one second will linger for an eternity he also realized
that matter and energy are interchangeable e equals MC squared
Einstein's theories at the stage for the technological revolution that defined
the 20th century lasers electronic sensors nuclear fusion all point back to
one man and one miraculous year Einstein had a way of working but it was
really his stubbornness that made him stand out he didn't take for granted
what other people were saying he realized that gravity was different from
all the other forces of nature general relativity says that gravity is not a
force but it is a feature of space-time
Einstein's theories on gravity space and time led to startling outcomes that in
some cases Einstein himself could not believe the universe is expanding and is
not static as was thought at the time we now believe this expansion is caused by
a big *** his equations also revealed that regions we now call black holes can
cause space to buckle and bring time to a halt
recent technology has propelled an explosion of new findings raising new
questions that Einstein's theories do not address what powered the Big ***
what happens at the edge of a black hole and what is the mysterious dark energy
that is now accelerating the expansion of the universe
we've been at such crossroads before the scientific revolutions spawned by Isaac
Newton and Albert Einstein were a result of the growing inadequacy of established
theories of their times we're sort of at that stage again we are despite our
vastly more sophisticated understanding now than in 1905
we now have results primarily attained from Astrophysical observations which
are simply not accommodated in our theories this is where NASA's beyond
Einstein program begins scientists have set a course a well-coordinated mix of
facility class spacecraft probes and pathfinder missions each with powerful
new technology to explore the extremes of nature the Big *** black holes and
dark energy for it is here that the current theories begin to crack and
answers are revealed to really understand the laws of nature we have to
go to these extreme environments and study them to give a hint of the true
fundamental laws of nature people are talking about doing precision cosmology
for the first time because it used to be cosmology well we have a rough idea how
big the universe is maybe to a factor of two or three but now with these new
measurements we're really getting a handle on the overall density and
structure of the universe and what they're telling us is not what we
expected to hear
well the biggest mystery today in all of science is dark energy why is the
universe speeding up it's a fantastic puzzle and were quite
confident that when we figure it out it's going to give us answers about
other important puzzles as well since 1998 something totally unexpected
happened which is we discovered that not only our universe is expanding this
expansion is accelerating you know this is a classical who ordered that type
situation it's 70 percent or so is dark energy in the universe you know about 70
percent of the surface of the earth is covered with water imagine we didn't
have a clue what water was this is the situation wearing a mysterious force
propelling the universe ironically Einstein proposed such a force to
counter the inward pull of gravity and to keep the universe static which was
the belief 100 years ago he called this the cosmological constant a vacuum
energy of empty space when Edwin Hubble discovered the expansion of the universe
in the 1920s Einstein called the cosmological constant his greatest
mistake but the mysterious dark energy we see today may well be a manifestation
of this cosmological constant Einstein was perhaps right after all richard
fineman and others who developed quantum theory realized that empty space was
full of temporary or virtual particles continually forming and destroying
themselves physicists began to suspect that the vacuum of space ought to have a
repulsive form of energy generated from these virtual particles but they could
not *** its magnitude we still do not know whether the highly accelerated
expansion in the early universe called inflation and the current accelerated
expansion due to dark energy are related a space-based mission called the dark
energy probe to be jointly implemented by NASA and the Department of Energy is
being planned to measure the expansion accurately enough to learn whether this
energy is a property of empty space as Einstein
conjectured or whether it shows signs of the richer structure that is predicted
in modern unification theories this mission will be a major step in tackling
the mystery of dark energy for the first time we actually have an inventory of
the universe but if you look at the accounting 95% of the stuff is in forms
yet to be fully understood and so we know a lot but we understand much less
and among the 5% that scientists call ordinary matter lie yet more mysteries
the most perplexing of which are black holes black holes are the strongest test
of what the theory of gravity really is space is just bent and warped and
twisted in some incredibly complex way and if one could only understand that
one would have a fundamental insight into the theory of gravity in the past
five years our knowledge of black holes has really exploded by using space-based
and ground-based telescopes covering the full electromagnetic spectrum
astronomers have found that black holes are everywhere they come in a variety of
sizes and they are integral to the formation of galaxies one way to find a
black hole is to look for x-rays that are produced by matter caught up in its
violent and extreme environment in fact we are extremely close to looking at the
very edge of a black hole something Einstein never imagined what
happens to matter and energy as it moves closer to a black hole and crosses the
event horizon the theoretical border from which nothing can escape this time
really come to a standstill will we see a breakdown in general
relativity in the environment of extreme gravity
general relativity makes specific predictions about matter and energy
close to a black hole if upon close scrutiny we see the slightest deviation
between theory and observation we will understand limitations in Einstein's
equations two space missions will take us closer to a black hole event horizon
than we've ever been lissa a joint NASA European mission now
in formulation will listen for gravitational waves created by merging
black holes now we're talking about opening a window that's not even based
on electromagnetism it's a window that's based on
gravitational radiation the gravity wave spectrum is common new and really
unexplored frontier no one's directly detected gravity waves
as we start to open up this next frontier which I think many of us think
of is the great frontier for 21st century stronger I think we're going to
learn about different things from different parts of that spectrum another
mission will give us a closer look at black holes and probe the mystery of
dark energy constellation X an x-ray Observatory will make movies of the
material falling into a black hole to map the warping of space-time
constellation X will let us watch how that matter approaches the event horizon
and how from our perspective time creeps to a halt we'll be able to watch the
final x-ray flicker of light as matter plunges into the black hole and
disappears forever this is where we'll be able to probe the most extreme
conditions of gravity that we know of and really put on Stein's theories to
the test and we plan to probe deeper
in 1992 the nasa kobe mission discovered slight temperature fluctuations in the
nearly uniform Cosmic Microwave Background
that's the blanket of light encompassing the universe that is the afterglow of
the Big *** Kobe's successor NASA's W map mission produced this much higher
resolution image of the Cosmic Microwave Background becoming one of the most
scientifically significant images of cosmology today we look at the W math
data much of what we see in the data has the imprint of the physical processes
that took place about 300,000 years after the Big *** the basic properties
that we've inferred from this is that the geometry of the universe is flat or
nearly flat we also know it's pretty old today we know it's about 13.6 13.7
billion years old and the stars formed about 100 million years after the Big
*** the information obtained by W map and proposed missions will help
distinguish between competing theories of what sparked inflation and the Big
*** Einstein hoped to fold the quantum force
of electromagnetism into general relativity and to find a unified theory
much of what he could not answer and struggled with until the day he died
remains unanswered today these questions about dark energy black holes the Big
*** and the nature of gravity have come to define the cutting edge the next
revolution that I think could be in the not-too-distant future is to really
learn what space and time actually are and I think as to others that we will
learn that space and time are not fundamental there are more fundamental
entities that make up space and time and when we can figure out what they are the
atoms if you will of space and time themselves I think that will take our
understanding of the universe to a completely new level and I think that
discovery may be on the like Einstein's theories modern theories
make fantastic predictions that seem hard to believe unseen dimensions and
entire universes beyond our own we must find facts to confront and guide
these new theories thus we follow matter to the very brink
of black holes and detect particles of time left over from the beginning of the
universe and we will use breakthrough technologies to see beyond the vision of
Einstein to the uttermost extremities of existence
I get you're about the only person around it doesn't have TV coverage of
the things you got the flag up now you can see the Sun TV picture now Neal yes
we are getting a TV picture
at 104 daya please Amanda