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On Thursday, scientists are expected to declare they have detected gravitational waves. Not only will such a discovery support a prediction that's essential to Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, but it will also add to our understanding of the universe. In physics, gravitational waves are ripples in the curvature of spacetime which propagate as waves, traveling outward from the source. Predicted in 1916 by Albert Einstein on the basis of his theory of general relativity, gravitational waves theoretically transport energy as gravitational radiation. Read more ...
What You Need to Know About Gravitational Waves Discovery - February 11, 2016
This is an artistic rendering of spacetime being warped by the mass of a galaxy.
Artistic rendering shows the possible generation of gravitational waves during a galactic merger
In the wake of some very specific rumors focused on the possible discovery of these elusive ripples in spacetime, hopes are high that the international LIGO collaboration of scientists will finally put an end to the fevered speculation and announce the discovery of gravitational waves.
A Black Hole is a geometrically defined region of spacetime exhibiting such strong gravitational effects that nothing - including particles and electromagnetic radiation such as light - can escape from inside it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole. The boundary of the region from which no escape is possible is called the event horizon. Although crossing the event horizon has enormous effect on the fate of the object crossing it, it appears to have no locally detectable features. In many ways a black hole acts like an ideal black body, as it reflects no light. Moreover, quantum field theory in curved spacetime predicts that event horizons emit Hawking radiation, with the same spectrum as a black body of a temperature inversely proportional to its mass.
Time Travel Wikipedia
Time Travel Crystalinks
Time travel is the concept of movement (often by a human) between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space, typically using a hypothetical device known as a time machine. Time travel is a recognized concept in philosophy and fiction, but travel to an arbitrary point in time has a very limited support in theoretical physics, usually only in conjunction with quantum mechanics or Einstein-Rosen bridges or Wormhole. Sometimes the above narrow meaning of time travel is used, sometimes a broader meaning. For example, travel into the future (not the past) via time dilation is a well-proven phenomenon in physics (relativity) and is routinely experienced by astronauts, but only by several milliseconds, as they can verify by checking a precise watch against a clock that remained on Earth. Time dilation by years into the future could be done by taking a round trip during which motion occurs at speeds comparable to the speed of light, but this is not currently technologically feasible for vehicles.
A French girl, Bernadette Soubirous,
claimed to have experienced the first of 18 visions
of a lady dressed in white in a grotto near Lourdes.
Our Lady of Lourdes
About six million pilgrims, many of them seeking to be healed of disease and pain, visit Lourdes, the site of the most popular Roman Catholic shrine in France, each year. It's where the 14-year-old Marie-Bernarde Soubirous, later canonized as St. Bernadette, said she saw the Virgin Mary appear in a grotto on this day in 1858. Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes (a reference to the Virgin Mary) and the World Day of the Sick, a moment to focus on health care and human dignity. Pope John Paul II came up with the idea of a day for the ailing after learning that he had Parkinson's disease. He traveled to Lourdes on his final foreign trip, in 2004, less than a year before he died. Pope Benedict XVI, acknowledging his own frailty, used this day to announce his retirement in 2013. 'The church has recognized 69 miracles and thousands of cures at Lourdes, a small city in the foothills of the Pyrenees. The faithful say that the waters of its grotto have healing powers.
