Browse Physics

A well-known model for studying magnetic phase transitions may provide a path to developing a quantum theory of gravity.

Theorists show that mathematical divergences may not be a problem for the low-energy limit of certain effective theories of quantum gravity.

Nearly fifty years after its inception, the Gravity Probe B satellite mission delivers the first measurements of how a spinning gyroscope precesses in the gravitational warping of spacetime.

Tests of an early design for a gravity-wave detector determine sensitivity limits in a new frequency window.

A modification of the theory of gravity can explain the dynamics of gas-rich galaxies without the need for dark matter.

LISA, a future gravitational wave detector, could find evidence that the early universe had fewer than three spatial dimensions.

Ultracold atoms trapped in optical lattices allow high-precision measurement of the gravitational constant.

More realistic simulations of merging binary black holes should help guide experiments designed to detect gravity waves.

Surface waves in a trough of flowing water provide an analog system in which to study Hawking radiation.

More than a decade’s worth of data collected from the LAGEOS II satellite is offering a new way to test general relativity.

Evidence for radiation analogous to that predicted near black holes by Hawking has been found in the emission of optical filaments propagating through glass.

How do gravitational singularities avoid being trapped by event horizons?

The mysterious slowing down of some newborn, fast-moving, black holes may result from gravitational waves emitted by a bulge in the event horizon.

A quantum field propagating in a curved spacetime can have fluctuations in its vacuum energy density that are large enough to completely dominate its classical energy density.

A three-dimensional version of gravity might lend itself to a quantum treatment.

The insights of a provocative connection between general relativity and quantum field theory, called the AdS/CFT correspondence, have been extended to rotating black holes that can occur astrophysically.

A mathematical formulism makes a step forward in proving the AdS/CFT correspondence that connects quantum mechanics with gravity.

Can quantum electronic devices offer an experimental system that mimics the behavior of black holes?

Finding a quantum theory of gravity remains one of the great unsolved problems in modern physics. Two papers present a quantum gravity theory that, while making different assumptions than general relativity, still reproduces Einstein’s theory in certain limits.

A “simple” closed-form Hamiltonian for a relativistic system of n gravitating particles, which depends only on the particles’ momenta and coordinates, is developed.