In high-energy particle collisions we study the smallest known constituents of matter. According to our best knowledge of physics, these constituents have mass only because of the way they interact with a unique quantity which permeates all of space. This quantity, like practically everything else in the strange world of the very small, is a quantum field.
He was one of the greatest scientists the world has ever known, yet if I had to convey the essence of Albert Einstein in a single word, I would choose simplicity. Perhaps an anecdote will help. Once, caught in a downpour, he took off his hat and held it under his coat. Asked why, he explained, with admirable logic, that the rain would damage the hat, but his hair would be none the worse for its wetting. This knack for going instinctively to the heart of a matter was the secret of his major scientific discoveries- this and his extraordinary feeling for beauty.
Gravity is one of the four fundamental forces of nature. It is an immediate fact of
everyday experience, yet it presents us with some of the deepest theoretical and
experimental challenges in contemporary physics. Gravity is the weakest of the four
fundamental forces, but, because it is a universal attraction between all forms of
energy, it governs the structure of matter on the largest scales of space and time,
including the structure of the universe itself
Objects raise hopes of scientists managing to track ‘blobs’ being swallowed by black hole
A number of bizarre shape-shifting objects have been discovered close to the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.
The blobs are thought to be giant stars that spend part of their orbits so close to the black hole that they get stretched out like bubble gum before returning to a compact, roughly spherical form.
