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Enlarge ImageIt's relative. Astronomers have been measuring spin precession in an eclipsing pair of pulsars.Credit: Daniel Cantin/McGill University As if his reputation needed cementing, astronomers have confirmed Albert Einstein's status as a supergenius once more. Studying a unique pair of pulsars--small and extremely dense leftovers from supernova explosions--researchers have measured an effect that was predicted by Einstein's 92-year-old general theory of relativity. The result, they report tomorrow in Science, is almost exactly what the famous physicist had foreseen. In Einstein's relativistic universe, matter curves space and slows down time, and the speed of light remains the only constant. But...

Einstein's self-proclaimed "biggest blunder" -- his postulation of a cosmological constant (a force that opposes gravity and keeps the universe from collapsing) -- may not be such a blunder after all, according to the research of an international team of scientists that includes two Texas A&M University researchers. The team is working on a project called ESSENCE that studies supernovae (exploding stars) to figure out if dark energy – the accelerating force of the universe – is consistent with Einstein’s cosmological constant. Texas A&M researchers Nicholas Suntzeff and Kevin Krisciunas are part of the project, which began in October of...

A surfer dude with no fixed address may be this century's Einstein. A. Garrett Lisi, a physicist who divides his time between surfing in Maui and teaching snowboarding in Lake Tahoe, has come up with what may be the Grand Unified Theory. That's the "holy grail" of physics that scientists have been searching for ever since Albert Einstein presented his General Theory of Relativity nearly 100 years ago. Even more remarkable is that Lisi, who has a Ph.D. but no permanent university affiliation, solves the problem without resorting to exotic dimensions, string theory or exceptionally complex mathematics. A successful Grand...

Another Theory of Relativity by: Malcolm A. Kline, November 06, 2007 Relativists, beware. The professors who tell you that “Everything is relative” probably fail to relate how destructive an idea that is. In an interview with Hillsdale College’s Imprimis magazine, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas noted “the connection between relativism, nihilism, and Naziism.” “The common idea that you can do whatever you want to do, because truth and morality are relative, leads to the idea that if you are powerful enough, you can kill people because of their race or faith,” Justice Thomas explains. “So ask your relativist friends sometime:...

A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light - an achievement that would undermine our entire understanding of space and time. According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would require an infinite amount of energy to propel an object at more than 186,000 miles per second. However, Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, say they may have breached a key tenet of that theory. The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - travelled "instantaneously" between a pair of...

How Do We Think About What Is Human? A talk on C S Lewis view on the humanist future Tonight on O Riley was this video and the indifference this father had towards his Baby daughter I thought this observation of C S Lewis was chilling and we know in the News we are hearing more deprave interference taking place in the world in which we are living! To think these people get to vote and this is why it is important the Real America wakes up and votes in 2008! Landlord and teaching a baby to about stress and...

AFTER more than 90 years, scientists believe they may have found experimental proof for general relativity, one of Albert Einstein’s greatest theories. Scientists announced yesterday that early results from Gravity Probe B (GP-B), the £400m space mission carrying the first experiments capable of testing the theory, suggested that Einstein was right. The researchers cautioned that they still had several months of work to confirm the result. However, the announcement, made at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society, is seen as highly significant. Since its launch by Nasa in April 2004, GP-B has been using four ultra-precise gyroscopes to...

What do Volvo, Ericsson, Saab and IKEA have in common? The people of Sweden have more faith in them than in the church. Perhaps the news shouldn't come as much of a surprise, coming as it does from a country best known for its meatballs and the bright blue and yellow warehouses selling cheap and cheerful furniture around the globe. Still, preacher men the world over must be reeling. A new poll taken of Swedes indicates that more people trust IKEA than the church in the largely Protestant country. According to the poll, taken by the business weekly Dagens Industri,...

September 14, 2006 - An international research team led by Prof. Michael Kramer of the University of Manchester’s Jodrell Bank Observatory, UK, has used three years of observations of the “double pulsar”, a unique pair of natural stellar clocks which they discovered in 2003, to prove that Einstein’s theory of general relativity–the theory of gravity that displaced Newton’s–is correct to within a staggering 0.05%. Their results are published on the14th September in the journal Science and are based on measurements of an effect called the Shapiro Delay. The double pulsar system, PSR J0737-3039A and B, is 2000 light-years away in...

An international research team led by Prof. Michael Kramer of the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory, UK, has used three years of observations of the "double pulsar", a unique pair of natural stellar clocks which they discovered in 2003, to prove that Einstein's theory of general relativity - the theory of gravity that displaced Newton's - is correct to within a staggering 0.05%. Their results are published on the14th September in the journal Science and are based on measurements of an effect called the Shapiro Delay. The double pulsar system, PSR J0737-3039A and B, is 2000 light-years away in...

One of the brightest and furthest known objects in the universe might not be a black hole as traditionally believed, but rather an exotic new type of object, a new study suggests. (snip)

  "Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods." —Albert Einstein  The general, historical dialogue between religion and science goes back a long way—at least to Plato, Aristotle, and Leibniz. Before the 17th century, the goals of science were wisdom, understanding the natural order, and living in harmony with it. Ever since the "quantum revolution" of about 70 years ago, various scientists have been finding the intriguing parallels between their results and certain mystical-transcendental religions. Heisenberg, Bohr, Schroedinger, Eddington, Einstein—all held a mystical, spiritual...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A team of Australian scientists has proposed that the speed of light may not be a constant, a revolutionary idea that could unseat one of the most cherished laws of modern physics -- Einstein's theory of relativity. The team, led by theoretical physicist Paul Davies of Sydney's Macquarie University, say it is possible that the speed of light has slowed over billions of years. If so, physicists will have to rethink many of their basic ideas about the laws of the universe. "That means giving up the theory of relativity and E=mc squared and all that sort...

The proof that faster-than-light (FTL) propagation is not allowed by nature is simple. Special relativity (SR) forbids it because, in that theory, time slows and approaches a cessation of flow for any material entity approaching the speed of light. So no matter how much energy is brought to bear, the entity cannot be propelled all the way to, much less beyond, the point where time ceases. The entity’s inertia simply increases towards infinity as the speed barrier is approached.[*] But most importantly, relativists are confident that SR is a valid theory because it has passed eleven independent experiments confirming most...

Lorentz invariance says that the laws of physics are the same for an observer at rest on the Earth or one who is rotated through some angle or traveling at a constant speed relative to the observer at rest. Looking for a crack in the universe in the form of a very faint field pervading the Cosmos, one that exerts a force on electron spin, would mean the end of Lorentz invariance. An important ingredient in Einstein's theory of special relativity, Lorentz invariance has been borne out in numerous experiments. A new experiment conducted at the University of Washington, in...

Scientists funded by the European Space Agency have measured the gravitational equivalent of a magnetic field for the first time in a laboratory. Under certain special conditions the effect is much larger than expected from general relativity and could help physicists to make a significant step towards the long-sought-after quantum theory of gravity. Just as a moving electrical charge creates a magnetic field, so a moving mass generates a gravitomagnetic field. According to Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, the effect is virtually negligible. However, Martin Tajmar, ARC Seibersdorf Research GmbH, Austria; Clovis de Matos, ESA-HQ, Paris; and colleagues have measured...

NEWS RELEASE October 3, 2005 Contact: Bob Kahn, Gravity Probe B Public Affairs: (650) 723-2540, kahn@relgyro.stanford.edu Comment: Francis Everitt, Gravity Probe B Principal Investigator: (650) 725-4104, francis@relgyro.stanford.edu Editor Note: Photos and graphics are available on the web at http://einstein.stanford.edu/pao/newspix/hires. Relevant Web URLs: http://einstein.stanford.edu http://www.gravityprobeb.com Putting relativity to the test, NASA's Gravity Probe B experiment is one step away from revealing if Einstein was right Almost 90 years after Einstein postulated his general theory of relativity—our current theory of gravity—scientists have finally finished collecting the data that will put this theory to an experimental test. For the past 17 months, NASA's...

For a few moments there, “Intelligent Design” seemed to be making headway. Two weeks ago, the Smithsonian announced it would screen the movie, “The Privileged Planet,” produced by the Discovery Institute, at the National Museum of History on June 23rd. The outcry in the New York Times and The Washington Post was immediate. The Smithsonian was caving to religious fundamentalists. “While `The Privileged Planet’ is an extremely sophisticated religious film, it is a religious film nevertheless,” pronounced The Post in an editorial entitled “Dissing Darwin.” Within a week, the Smithsonian had yielded to liberal opinion. It cancelled its “co-sponsorship” of...

Is there a more powerful modern Trinity? These reigning deities proclaim humanity's inability to thoroughly explain the world. They have been the touchstones of modernity, their presence an unwelcome burden at first, and later, in the name of postmodernism, welcome company. Their rule has also been affirmed by their once-sworn enemy: science. Three major discoveries in the 20th century even took on their names. Albert Einstein's famous Theory (Relativity), Kurt Gödel's famous Theorem (Incompleteness) and Werner Heisenberg's famous Principle (Uncertainty) declared that, henceforth, even science would be postmodern.

JUST about a hundred years ago, Albert Einstein began writing a paper that secured his place in the pantheon of humankind's greatest thinkers. With his discovery of special relativity, Einstein upended the familiar, thousands-year-old conception of space and time. To be sure, even a century later, not everyone has fully embraced Einstein's discovery. Nevertheless, say "Einstein" and most everyone thinks "relativity." physicists call 1905 Einstein's "miracle year" not because of the discovery of relativity alone, but because in that year Einstein achieved the unimaginable, writing four papers that each resulted in deep and formative changes to our understanding of the...

This year marks the 100th anniversary of a revolution in our notions of space and time. Before 1905, when Albert Einstein published his theory of special relativity, most people believed that space and time were as Sir Isaac Newton described them back in the 17th century: Space was the fixed, unchanging "stage" upon which the great cosmic drama unfolded, and time was the mysterious, universal "clock in the sky." Even today, people commonly assume that this intuitive sense of space and time is correct. It's not. Einstein's 1905 paper, along with another one he published in 1915, painted an entirely...

Light as we know it may be a direct result of small violations of relativity, according to new research scheduled for publication online Tuesday (March 22) in the journal Physical Review D. [Preprint is here.] In discussing the work, physics professor Alan Kostelecky of Indiana University described light as "a shimmering of ever-present vectors in empty space" and compared it to waves propagating across a field of grain. This description is markedly different from existing theories of light, in which scientists believe space is without direction and the properties of light are a result of an underlying symmetry of nature....

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Scientists may not have to go over to the dark side to explain the fate of the universe.The theory that the accelerated expansion of the universe is caused by mysterious "dark energy" is being challenged by New York University physicist Georgi Dvali. He thinks there's just a gravity leak.Scientists have known since the 1920s that the universe is expanding. In the late 1990s, they realized that it is expanding at an ever-increasing pace. At a loss to explain the stunning discovery, cosmologists blamed it on dark energy, a newly coined term to describe the mysterious antigravity force...

BERLIN (AP) - Celebrating a native son who had to flee the Nazis, Germany opened festivities Wednesday marking the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and the 50th anniversary of his death. The so-called "Einstein Year" of 2005 is being marked with tours, a scientific conference and a major exhibition about Einstein, whose theories about space, time and relativity revolutionized science and also helped make him a pop icon. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder began the celebration at the German Historical Museum in Berlin, calling on his fellow Germans and scientists to embrace innovation and political debate as Einstein...

Current theory is that nothing CAN travel faster than light (photons), and it is upon this that the theory of relativity rests. How about we change that definition to "nothing travels faster than light", ie that it is not impossible to exceed light speed, it is just that at the moment nothing does. Suppose a particle of light (photon) has some mass (otherwise it would not exist). Suppose we envisage a photon travelling at light speed. We are travelling in our turbocharged faster than light speed vehicle. We come up behind the photon and give it a little nudge. Does...

  100 years of Einstein Miraculous visions Dec 29th 2004 From The Economist print edition A century after Einstein's miracle year, most people still do not understand exactly what it was he did. Here, we attempt to elucidate IN THE span of 18 months, Isaac Newton invented calculus, constructed a theory of optics, explained how gravity works and discovered his laws of motion. As a result, 1665 and the early months of 1666 are termed his annus mirabilis. It was a sustained sprint of intellectual achievement that no one thought could ever be equalled. But in a span of a...

In 1905 the musings of a functionary in the Swiss patent office changed the world forever. His intellectual bequest remains for a new generation of physicists vying to concoct a theory of everything. Albert Einstein looms over 20th-century physics as its defining, emblematic figure. His work altered forever the way we view the natural world. "Newton, please forgive me," Einstein begged as relativity theory wholly obliterated the absolutes of time and space that the reigning arbiter of all things physical had embraced more than two centuries earlier. With little more to show than a rejected doctoral thesis from a few...

Physicists in Switzerland have confirmed that information cannot be transmitted faster than the speed of light. Nicolas Gisin and colleagues at the University of Geneva have shown that the "group velocity" of a laser pulse in an optical fibre can travel faster than the speed of light but that the "signal velocity" - the speed at which information travels - cannot (N Brunner et al. 2004 Phys. Rev. Lett. 93 203902). Two types of velocity are used to describe the propagation of a wave in a dispersive medium: the phase velocity and the group velocity. The phase velocity is the...

Was Einstein a plagiarist? By Lucy Sherriff Published Monday 15th November 2004 15:57 GMT A theoretical physicist at the University of Nevada has published a paper alleging that Einstein did not derive the gravitational field equations at the heart of the General Theory of Relativity, and might in fact have copied key equations from fellow physicist David Hilbert. The two scientists were working in the same area in 1915, and were developing their theories independently but concurrently. Each submitted papers for publication throughout November of that year. The two were also corresponding about their research, making it hard to unravel...

Physicists in Germany have used an atomic interferometer to perform the most accurate ever test of the equivalence principle at the level of atoms. Sebastian Fray and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching and the universities of Munich and Tuebingen compared the acceleration of two isotopes of rubidium in the Earth's gravitational field (arXiv.org/abs/physics/0411052). As expected the atoms accelerated at the same rate. The weak equivalence principle is a cornerstone of general relativity and states that, in the absence of other forces, all objects fall with the same acceleration under the influence of gravity. Experiments...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Einstein was right -- again. Satellites that have been pulled slightly off their orbits show that the Earth is indeed twisting the fabric of space-time as it rotates, scientists said on Thursday. They said their findings are the first to directly measure and prove an important aspect of Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity -- that a rotating body warps and twists the "fabric" that combines the three dimensions of space and the fourth dimension of time. "As the Earth turns, it is actually twisting space-time with it. Near Earth, the twisting is greater," said Michael Salamon,...

Earth's spin warps space around the planet, according to a new study that confirms a key prediction of Einstein's general theory of relativity. After 11 years of watching the movements of two Earth-orbiting satellites, researchers found each is dragged by about 6 feet (2 meters) every year because the very fabric of space is twisted by our whirling world. The results, announced today, are much more precise than preliminary findings published by the same group in the late 1990s. Frame dragging The effect is called frame dragging. It is a modification to the simpler aspects of gravity set out by...

Gravitational anomalies An invisible hand?An unexplained effect during solar eclipses casts doubt on General Relativity “ASSUME nothing” is a good motto in science. Even the humble pendulum may spring a surprise on you. In 1954 Maurice Allais, a French economist who would go on to win, in 1988, the Nobel prize in his subject, decided to observe and record the movements of a pendulum over a period of 30 days. Coincidentally, one of his observations took place during a solar eclipse. When the moon passed in front of the sun, the pendulum unexpectedly started moving a bit faster than...

FIRST-PERSON: Contradictions of liberal moral philosophy By Mark Kelly RICHMOND, Va. (BP)--Did you watch the three-hour Peter Jennings special on April 5 that explained why no intelligent, right-thinking person would think Jesus was anything more than a misguided do-gooder with political aspirations? Did you notice the part where the Apostle Paul was written off for his supposed “puritanical intolerance"? Maybe you knew ahead of time that the Jennings “documentary" wasn’t going to be worth the time, but I know you endured the constant barrage of media reports that disparaged Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of The Christ" as an anti-Semitic gore-fest...

Evicting Einstein A physics experiment on the drawing board for the International Space Station could help find the grand unifying "Theory of Everything." Listen to this story via streaming audio, a downloadable file, or get help.March 26, 2004:  Sooner or later, the reign of Einstein, like the reign of Newton before him, will come to an end. An upheaval in the world of physics that will overthrow our notions of basic reality is inevitable, most scientists believe, and currently a horse race is underway between a handful of theories competing to be the successor to the throne.In the running...

A physics professor will try to turn back time in an experiment at the Miami Museum of Science. It's back to the future all over again -- at least, that's what Carlos Dolz has in mind. The Florida International University physics professor plans to take time to task at 10 a.m. Wednesday, when he presents an experiment that involves using acceleration to speed up a digital clock by four seconds. Dolz's experiment -- which takes six hours to finish -- will become part of Playing With Time, the current exhibit at the Miami Museum of Science. Dolz, who has been...

The Future According to Professor Paul Davies "Scientists have no doubt whatever that it is possible to build a time machine to visit the future". Since the publication of Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity in 1905, few, if any, scientists would dispute that time travel to the future is perfectly possible. According to this theory, time runs slower for a moving person than for someone who is stationary. This has been proven by experiments using very accurate atomic clocks. In theory, a traveller on a super high-speed rocket ship could fly far out into the Universe and then come back...

After String of Delays, Gravity Probe B Problems Continue By BRIAN BERGER Space News Staff Writer WASHINGTON — Gravity Probe B, a space-based physics experiment some 40 years in the making, is facing another potentially lengthy delay. The spacecraft was three days from rolling out to the launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. when NASA decided Nov. 15 to replace an improperly wired component that threatened to interfere with the sensitive experiment. Replacing the component will entail some disassembly of the spacecraft and additional testing. The resulting delay, which could stretch into June, is expected to cost NASA...

Seeking still more complete descriptions of the workings of spacetime, scientists are testing the boundaries of the special theory of relativity. After a century, Einstein's special theory of relativity, which describes the motion of particles moving at close to the speed of light, has held up remarkably well. But as scientists probe the edges of the current knowledge of physics with new tests, they may find effects that require modifications on the venerable theory. Several current theories, designed to encompass the behavior of black holes, the big bang and the fabric of the universe itself, could lead to violations of...

RETHINKING RELATIVITY BY TOM BETHEL No one has paid attention yet, but a well-respected physics journal just published an article whose conclusion, if generally accepted, will undermine the foundations of modern physics -- Einstein's Theory of Relativity in particular. Published in Physics Letters A (December 21, 1998), the article claims that the speed with which the force of gravity propagates must be at least twenty billion times faster than the speed of light. This would contradict the Special Theory of Relativity of 1905, which asserts that nothing can go faster than light. This claim about the special status of the...

[The Cassini spacecraft will reach Saturn in July 2004 and should send the small Huygens probe into the hazy atmosphere of Titan in January 2005. On its way there, Cassini flew nearly behind the Sun from Earth's point of view two years ago, offering a chance for a highly precise test of general relativity. Courtesy NASA/JPL.] Albert Einstein still rules. His 1915 theory of gravity, the general theory of relativity, has just passed its most stringent test by far. Extremely precise measurements of the radio link between Earth and NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, bound for Saturn, match general relativity's predictions extraordinarily...

"You believe in a dice-playing God and I in perfect laws in the world of things existing as real objects." Albert Einstein Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Proem If in the development of a scientific theory an error is made, further errors will necessarily follow. Each new identification generally assumes the correctness of the theory developed up to that point. If the partial theory is incorrect, any extension will operate to perpetuate its errors, and in the process will generate additional and more extensive errors. Unless the initial error is corrected, the consequence is an endless series of errors piled...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A team of Australian scientists has proposed that the speed of light may not be a constant, a revolutionary idea that could unseat one of the most cherished laws of modern physics -- Einstein's theory of relativity. The team, led by theoretical physicist Paul Davies of Sydney's Macquarie University, say it is possible that the speed of light has slowed over billions of years. If so, physicists will have to rethink many of their basic ideas about the laws of the universe. "That means giving up the theory of relativity and E=mc squared and all that sort...

Ultra-fast particles inflated Universe, physicists say By Mike Martin and copyright 2002 United Press International UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. May 7 (UPI) -- Tachyons -- particles that move faster than the speed of light in defiance of Einstein's strict prohibitions against such amazing speeds -- may be responsible for the inflation that expanded the Universe from zero to trillions of light years in a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. Only a particle that moves at the phenomenal speed of a rolling tachyon, physicists say, could inflate the Universe as quickly as cosmologist Alan Guth first predicted in his...

Is God In Time? Gregory Koukl   Is it possible that all of history is one big space-time manifold--a "block universe"? Put your thinking caps on today. We're going to talk about time. It's common for us to make the comment "The spaceless, timeless God" or "Then we'll pass out of time, into eternity." However, the Scripture is not clear about God's timelessness. Most of the verses seem to indicate God is in time: Rev 1:4; Rev 4:8, Ps 90, Jude 25, 2 Pet 3:8. Two popular books describe a picture of God as timeless. Philip Yancey's book Disappointment...

The diplomatic 'math' of combatting terrorists doesn't add up.