Strange signals picked up from black holes and distant supernovae suggest there's more to space-time than Einstein believed
WE LIVE in an invisible landscape: a landscape that, although we cannot perceive it directly, determines everything that we see and do. Every object there is, from a planet orbiting the sun to a rocket coasting to the moon or a pencil dropped carelessly on the floor, follows its imperceptible contours. We battle against them each time we labour up a hill or staircase.
This is the landscape of space-time: the underlying fabric of the physical universe, perhaps of reality itself. Although we don't see its ups and downs, we feel them as the force we call gravity. Developed by the physicist Hermann Minkowski in the 20th century, and used by Albert ...
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.
