In many ways, black holes are science’s answer to science fiction. As strange as anything from a novelist’s imagination, black holes warp the fabric of spacetime and imprison light and matter in a gravitational death grip. Their bizarre properties make black holes ideal candidates for fictional villainy. But now black holes are up for a different role: heroes helping physicists assess the real-world existence of another science fiction favorite — hidden extra dimensions of space.
Astrophysical giants several times the mass of the sun and midget black holes smaller than a subatomic p... (p. 22)
Were the Earth a crystal ball, you might gaze 2,900
kilometers down to its outer core with a telescope. The Earth, though, is
frustratingly opaque — to light. Most knowledge of the planet’s internal
structure comes from studying seismic waves, which give a kind of ultrasound
image. Inferences about Earth’s internal chemistry rely on the elements found
in near-surface rocks, meteorites and the sun.
Recently, geoscientists have developed a new tool for
probing the Earth’s innards. Borrowing a page from astrophysics, they are using
the curious subatomic particles known as neutr... (p. 16)
Found in: Astronomy, Earth and Planetary Science
Science fiction movies and books are
full of parallel universes.
In a typical scenario, as in the
movie Sliding Doors, something happens in one universe—like a woman
misses a train—but in a parallel universe, the same woman catches it, setting
in motion diverging life paths.
Or, as in Isaac Asimov’s imaginative novel The Gods
Themselves, alien inhabitants of a parallel universe with different
physical laws exchange energy with our universe and send coded messages to
Earth.
Even without any real-life alien messages to decipher,
though, many cosmologists believe that ther...
Found in: Astronomy, Atom & Cosmos, Matter & Energy and Physics