Lifeboat Foundation

For over 50 years, it’s been the scientifically accepted theory describing the origin of the Universe. It’s time we all learned its truths.

These supremely stable particles could explain dark matter.

A new Einsteinian equation, ER=EPR, may be the clue physicists need to merge quantum mechanics with general relativity.

We were unsure if wormholes could exist long enough to allow a person through. Now calculations indicate they are extremely rare, but could last the age of the universe.

One of Stephen Hawking’s predictions seems to have been borne out in a man-made “black hole.”

A theoretical physicist in England has won a prestigious award for her work on the theory of massive gravity, which could explain why gravity hasn’t constrained the rapid expansion of the universe. The $100,000 award honors the work of Claudia de Rham, who has worked for 10 years on a way to turn massive gravity theory into something measurable.

Cosmologists have puzzled for decades about how to marry gravity with the speed at which the universe is expanding. Gravity as we understand it would work to hold the universe together, not let it race apart from itself into eventual oblivion. Enter the counterpart to dark matter, dark energy, which is what scientists call whatever is pulling the universe apart.

A photograph of the infant cosmos reveals the precise amounts of dark matter and dark energy in the universe, leaving precious little room for argument.

She is now hopeful that advances in gravitational wave astronomy will make it possible to test the predictions of massive gravity theory within the decade.

“It would be amazing if it was shown to be right,” De Rham told The Guardian. “That may or may not happen, but what will happen is that we’ll have a much better fundamental understanding of gravity and that’s just something so deep, it’s one of the big questions today.”

READ MORE: Has physicist’s gravity theory solved ‘impossible’ dark energy riddle? [The Guardian].

Here on Earth, we pay quite a lot of attention to the sun. It’s visible to us, after all, and central to our lives. But it is only one of the billions of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. It’s also quite small compared to other stars – most are at least eight times more massive.

These massive stars influence the structure, shape and chemical content of a galaxy. And when they have exhausted their hydrogen gas fuel and die, they do so in an explosive event called a supernova. This explosion is sometimes so strong that it triggers the formation of new stars out of materials in the dead star’s surroundings.

But there’s an important gap in our knowledge: astronomers don’t yet fully understand how those original massive stars themselves are initially formed. So far, observations have only yielded some pieces of the puzzle.