WATCH: Why the speed of light is NOT about light

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WATCH: Why the speed of light is NOT about light

More like speed of causality.

The Universe is pretty nuts when you think about it. All that matter zooming around space, colliding into each other and aggregating into greater things like planets and asteroids, unfathomable black holes swallowing everything at the centre of a galaxy, while star systems are hurtling towards the edges at speeds we can't explain.

And yet, in all this hustle and bustle, for whatever reason, everything in the Universe appears to keeps to a very strict speed limit: 299,792 km/sec (186,282 mps).

Why this speed in particular? That's the absolute fastest that a light particle - or photon - can travel in a vacuum. That's the speed of light, and everything in the Universe must adhere to it, according to our current understanding of the laws of physics.

And yet, that statement isn't exactly correct, as the episode of Space Time above explains, because it's backwards.

The Universe DNGAF about your rules, or your light. The speed limit that everything in the Universe must adhere to - the universal constant - is about something much deeper. As Matt explains, the speed of light should really be called the speed of causality.

You can think of causality in relation to a concept known as the spacetime interval, which states that causal connections are the only order of events that all observers, from wherever they're positioned in the Universe, can agree on.

But why does causality have to have a speed limit, and why does light get to determine that limit?

To understand that, we need to look at two things that have been crucial to our current understanding of the laws of physics: Galileo's principle of relativity - which was the precursor to Einstein's theory of relativity - and Maxwell's equations.

Set out by physicist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell, Maxwell's equations would form the foundation of classical electrodynamics, and cast doubt on the robustness of Galilean relativity.

Now here's where the video gets really good, because in order to reconcile what's going on with relativity and Maxwell's equations, we get to talk about a pony on roller skates, and an electric monkey on a skateboard.

When all that madness is said and done (our new favourite phrase is "total monkey speed"), we come to the conclusion that electromagnetic forces hold clues about the fundamental interplay between space, time, and velocity, says Matt, and this cannot hold if your maths relies on an infinite speed of light.

But how does all that fit together, and why do you need a specific limit of light speed to hold it all in place? I'll let the episode of Space Time above explain all that, and get ready to feel very confused, and then very smart by the end of it, because this stuff is complicated, but incredibly awesome. Science is always worth the brain-hurt.

And for more on causality, check out the video below:

Astronomers think they've detected the first water clouds outside our Solar System

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Astronomers think they've detected the first water clouds outside our Solar System

Wowow.

Scientists have found strong evidence for the existence of water clouds on a nearby brown dwarf, and it's the first time these kinds of clouds have been discovered outside our Solar System.

The brown dwarf in question is called WISE 0855, and it's the coldest known object outside our Solar System. Not that we know that much about it yet, as it's extremely faint, but the findings could help us understand more about the composition of these extrasolar objects, as well as gas giants like Jupiter.

"We would expect an object that cold to have water clouds, and this is the best evidence that it does," said astronomer Andrew Skemer from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

WISE 0855 was discovered back in 2014, and is located just 7.2 light-years from Earth – relatively close to us, in astronomical terms.

It's neither a planet, nor a star. In fact, brown dwarfs are sometimes called 'failed stars' because they're somewhere between the two. They form in the same way stars do – from a gravitational conglomeration of gas and dust in space – but they don't have sufficient mass to spark or sustain the nuclear reactions in their cores that make stars shine.

What makes studying WISE 0855 so difficult is the fact that it's almost impossible for us to see using conventional spectroscopy. The brown dwarf's extreme faintness in the near-infrared spectrum, and the fact that it's many trillions of kilometres away, makes it barely visible to even some of our most powerful ground-based telescopes.

With persistence, Skemer and fellow researchers figured out how to obtain an infrared spectrum of WISE 0855, using the Gemini-North telescope in Hawaii, and recording a broader wavelength (at 5 microns) to that used in conventional spectroscopy at optical or near-infrared wavelengths (less than 2.5 microns).

"It's five times fainter than any other object detected with ground-based spectroscopy at this wavelength," said Skemer. "Now that we have a spectrum, we can really start thinking about what's going on in this object. Our spectrum shows that WISE 0855 is dominated by water vapour and clouds, with an overall appearance that is strikingly similar to Jupiter."

WISE 0855 has five times the mass of Jupiter, but isn't as cold, with a temperature of –23 degrees Celsius (–9 degrees Fahrenheit), compared to Jupiter's even frostier –143 degrees Celsius (–225 degrees Fahrenheit).

But despite the differences, the researchers think WISE 0855 and Jupiter are similar enough to help us learn more about these kinds of cold objects both in and outside our Solar System.

"WISE 0855 is our first opportunity to study an extrasolar planetary-mass object that is nearly as cold as our own gas giants," said Skemer.

Another difference between WISE 0855 and Jupiter is that the researchers think Jupiter has a more turbulent atmosphere. Jupiter's atmosphere contains a lot of the compound phosphine, which forms in the interior of the planet and goes on to create new chemical reactions in the outer atmosphere.

By contrast, WISE 0855 doesn't show a strong phosphine signal, which could mean it has less atmospheric reactions taking place. We won't know more until further observations of the brown dwarf are made, but what's exciting is that, thanks to the work done here, we now stand to learn a lot more about this cold, failed star, and the planets it resembles.

"The spectrum allows us to investigate dynamical and chemical properties that have long been studied in Jupiter's atmosphere, but this time on an extrasolar world," said Skemer.

The findings are to be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Saturn's biggest moon could support a new kind of alien life

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Saturn's biggest moon could support a new kind of alien life

Life, uh, finds a way.

When it comes to looking for life on other planets, scientists tend to focus their search on planets that have the right conditions for liquid water to form, but Saturn's moon Titan might just point the way to the existence of lifewithout water.

Researchers in the US have been analysing the chemical composition of Saturn's largest satellite, and think the presence of hydrogen cyanide (HCN) molecules in the atmosphere could pave the way for different forms of life to evolve.

That's because HCN reacts to form polymers including polyimine, and polyimine is able to absorb a wide spectrum of light – so wide that it's enough to capture light penetrating Titan's dense and hazy atmosphere.

With that light, the scientists think polyimine could be a possible catalyst for life.

"Polyimine can exist as different structures, and they may be able to accomplish remarkable things at low temperatures, especially under Titan’s conditions," said chemist Martin Rahm from Cornell University.

"We are used to our own conditions here on Earth," he adds. "Our scientific experience is at room temperature and ambient conditions. Titan is a completely different beast."

Titan is Earth-like in that its surface is covered with lakes, rivers, and seas, but these are made up of liquid methane and ethane rather than water. The nitrogen and methane in the air make the planet's surface too toxic for humans to survive, but the researchers suggest other types of life could prosper.

The study builds on the Cassini-Huygens missions that have been ongoing for nearly 20 years. The data collected by the Cassini orbiter and Huygens probe – which landed on Titan back in 2005 – have been invaluable in allowing the Cornell team to simulate a prebiotic chemical trail that could lead to life... but not quite life as we know it.

The data from the NASA probes was plugged into a computer simulation run by Rahm and his team, which revealed that polyimine could spark life in the ultra-cold temperatures on the surface of Titan. Polyimine's precursor, hydrogen cyanide, has previously been linked to the start of life on Earth.

"If future observations could show there is prebiotic chemistry in a place like Titan, it would be a major breakthrough," said Rahm. "This paper is indicating that prerequisites for processes leading to a different kind of life could exist on Titan, but this [is] only the first step."

The research could mean Titan offers two chances of hosting alien life. Scientists think that there is liquid water under the frozen surface of Titan, but locked away in a massive underground ocean – and there's a lot of speculation that these kinds of underground oceans located throughout the Solar System could hypothetically give rise to life.

In any case, if the researchers turn out to be right about the polyimine, we can broaden our search for extraterrestrial life beyond planets that very closely match Earth's environments – and that could be pretty huge.

Watch this space.

The findings have been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Watch live as NASA's Juno mission attempts to enter Jupiter's orbit

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Watch live as NASA's Juno mission attempts to enter Jupiter's orbit

Best way to celebrate the fourth of July.

The biggest space event of the year is happening soon. On July 4, NASA’s un-crewed Juno spacecraft will end its nearly five-year journey through space and embark on a mission to study the planet Jupiter like never before. 

But first, the spacecraft must lock on to Jupiter into what’s called a polar orbit. This is the most dangerous part of the entire Juno mission, and is what NASA will be watching instead of fireworks this holiday weekend.

As Juno approaches its destination on July 4, Jupiter’s tremendous gravitational pull will accelerate the spacecraft to blazing speeds of more than 150,000 mph (241,000 km/h), making Juno one of the fastest human-made objects ever built. 

After reaching a max speed of 165,000 mph (266,000 km/h) – fast enough to fly around Earth in 9 minutes – Juno will slam on the breaks by firing its engines. This is where things get tricky.

The Juno spacecraft weighs 3,500 pounds (1,600 kg) and will be barreling through space at 215 times the speed of sound. To slow down, the engines will fire for 35 minutes straight, burning through 17,600 pounds (7,900 kg) of fuel in the process.

If all goes according to plan, this perilous manoeuvre will place Juno into orbit around Jupiter, where the spacecraft will remain over the next 18 months, providing an unprecedented look at Jupiter’s powerful gravitational and magnetic fields. 

If something goes wrong, the US$1.13 billion mission will shoot past Jupiter, into deep space with no chance of return.

NASA only has one shot at this. The engine burn will start at 11:18pm ET on July 4.

You can watch the action at NASA unfold beginning at 10:30pm ET, as engineers monitor Juno’s instruments and anxiously await confirmation of the burn’s success. Witness history in the making on NASA TV or below:

https://youtu.be/UdmHHpAsMVw

This article was originally published by Business Insider.

China just unveiled the biggest alien-hunting telescope in the world

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China just unveiled the biggest alien-hunting telescope in the world

The truth is out there!

China just finished installing the last piece in the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, which stretches the size of 30 soccer fields on the side of a mountain in the south-western province of Guizhou.

The 500-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST for short, will be used to explore some of the most mysterious objects in the Universe, such as black holes and pulsars, and will "search for intelligent life from outer space",according to China's state broadcaster CCTV.

The US$185 million telescope will be able to detect radio waves coming from space in more detail than ever before, and will let us peer back in time to into the web of hydrogen gas that existed before galaxies formed in the early Universe.

"FAST will enable Chinese astronomers to jump-start many scientific goals, such as surveying the neutral hydrogen in the Milky Way, detecting faint pulsars, and listening to possible signals from other civilisations," said Nan Rendong, general engineer and chief scientist on the FAST project. "It's time for China to have its own big telescope."

The telescope is built into a natural depression, which protects the device from electromagnetic interference and allows its powerful receiver, which wasdesigned with the help of Australian scientists, to hone in on signals in space. 

With 4,450 reflective panels, the telescope is constructed with a similar design to the previous largest radio telescope, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, but it's a lot bigger - Arecibo is only 305 metres in diameter.

It'll now undergo months of debugging before it's estimated to officially begin operations in September, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who oversaw the project with the National Astronomical Observatories.

Once it's live, it'll be looking for short bursts of radio waves known as pulsars, which are rotating neutron stars that emit a beam of electromagnetic radiation that we can only detect when it's pointing towards Earth.

Not only are these stars fascinating in their own right, but they can also be used like very accurate timekeepers to help us measure any other forces in the Universe, such as the effects of gravitational waves rippling out from the Big Bang.

"Understanding the fundamental physics of pulsars will help us understand the Big Bang," Yue Youling, associate researcher with the National Astronomical Observatories, told CCTV, as Time magazine reports. "Now we only know what happened after the Big Bang, everything before that relies on our calculation. Therefore, there are a lot of uncertainties."

There's no official word as yet on what the extraterrestrial hunt will involve, but a good place to start might be Tabby's star and its strange orbiting megastructure?

This isn't China's only big investment in science and technology recently. Last month, they unveiled the world's first 93-petaFLOP computer - built mainly from local technology.

They've also announced they'll be putting a man on the moon by the 2030s, and have started building their own space station. 

We're pretty excited to see what scientists both in China around the world can do with the data collected by FAST. Fingers crossed for aliens.

Physicists suggest we might have just found dark matter while detecting gravitational waves

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Physicists suggest we might have just found dark matter while detecting gravitational waves

Eeep.

Scientists made history by detecting gravitational waves for the second time this week, after picking up the tiny vibrations rippling out through space from a black hole collision 1.4 billion years ago.

But as if that's not awesome enough, physicists now think we might have accidentally found something equally huge at the same time... dark matter.

Dark matter is estimated to make up around 26 percent of the mass and energy in the observable universe. But although we can detect the gravitational force this mysterious type of matter is exerting, it doesn't seem to put out any form of light or radiation that we can pick up - hence the 'dark'.

But have we just detected evidence of it for the first time? After analysing the gravitational wave signals picked up by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) back on 26 December 2015 - and announced to the public this week - a team of researchers from the US have put forward the hypothesis that this pair of black holes - or binary black holes - might actually be dark matter.

"We consider the possibility that the black hole binary detected by LIGO may be a signature of dark matter," the researchers from Johns Hopkins Universitywrote in Physical Review Letters.

That idea might sound a little out there, but they're not the first to put forward this suggestion. Just last month, a NASA scientist published a paper suggesting that primordial black holes - the black holes that appeared within a fraction of a second of the birth of the Universe - might actually be the 'dark matter' we can sense but not see in the Universe around us.

To put that into context, for decades, scientists have assumed that dark matter must be some kind of mysterious high-mass particle or axions that we can feel but not see, hidden within the Universe.

But we've gotten a lot better at detecting mysterious particles in recent years, particularly thanks to advances with the Large Hadron Collider, and yet experiment after experiment has turned up no sign of these hypothetical dark matter particles.

Instead, scientists are now beginning to look back to the uneven distribution of mass in the early Universe - which was always assumed to be a result of dark matter particles - and consider the possibility that it might have been caused by primordial black holes.

"These studies are providing increasingly sensitive results, slowly shrinking the box of parameters where dark matter particles can hide," said lead researcher of last month's paper, Alexander Kashlinsky. "The failure to find them has led to renewed interest in studying how well primordial black holes - black holes formed in the Universe's first fraction of a second - could work as dark matter."

So far, the research suggests that primordial black holes could fit quite well as dark matter. But what does LIGO have to do with all of this?

Well, the mass of a black hole is measured in terms of multiples of our Sun, and from the gravitational waves detected, researchers have calculated that the two black holes that merged were 36 and 29 solar masses.

That's big - so big in fact that it doesn't fit our understanding of regular stellar black holes, which form when stars collapse. But they're also not big enough to fit predictions for the size of supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies.

They do match the expectations of primordial black holes, though, which has led researchers to consider the possibility that those early black holes are what LIGO detected smashing into one another. And, interestingly, the black holes measured also match the mass predictions for dark matter - providing very tentative evidence that primordial black holes could be dark matter candidates. 

Primordial black holes are different to stellar black holes, not just because of their age, but because they formed from the collapse of large gas patches during the birth of the Universe. Their existence has never actually been confirmed, but from everything we know, they could explain the effects of what we think of as dark matter.

The Johns Hopkins team took things one step further and have now calculated - based on their size and shape - how often these primordial black holes would form binary pairs, and eventually collide. And their results suggest it's likely that what LIGO picked up was indeed a primordial black hole merger.

It's still way too say that primordial black holes are dark matter, but the evidence is slowly mounting, and future gravitational wave observations will be crucial to finding out more.

"We are not proposing this is the dark matter," said one of the researchers, Marc Kamionkowski. "We're not going to bet the house. It's a plausibility argument."

But he did add that the idea has "got a lot of potential".

"[The idea] that the discovery of gravitational waves could be connected to dark matter" has got the astrophysics community excited, added one of the researchers, Ely D. Kovetz.

We're remaining skeptical for now, seeing as scientists have already had one dark matter 'false alarm' this year, which was quickly debunked - and we seem to be a lot better at eliminating dark matter candidates than we are at substantiating them. But this is definitely a hypothesis we'll be following closely in the months to come.

Astronomers might have finally figured out what Ceres' weird bright spot is made of

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Astronomers might have finally figured out what Ceres' weird bright spot is made of

The plot thickens.

Astronomers working with NASA's Dawn spacecraft have found evidence that the mysterious bright spot inside the Occator Crater on Ceres – a dwarf planet located inside our galaxy's asteroid belt – is a massive amount of sodium carbonate: a type of salt.

The findings also suggest that the core of Ceres is hotter than previously thought, and the carbonate might be left over from an ancient body of water.

But before we jump into the new study, let’s have a quick refresher on Ceres and the Occator Crater in general. For starters, Ceres is a small, dwarf planet that has a diameter of roughly 945 kilometres (587 miles), accounting for 25 percent of all the mass in the asteroid belt – a region of space between Mars and Jupiter.

The mystery surrounding the bright spots found in the Occator Crater – an impact crater on the surface of Ceres that’s about 80-million-years-old and 92 kilometres (57 miles) wide – started back in early 2015 when researchers working with the Dawn space probe discovered them.

Since then, scientists have been trying to figure out what type of material these spots are made of, especially since they stand out like a diamond in the rough, compared to their rather dull surroundings.

Now, NASA researchers might have finally cracked the case, because they've found evidence suggesting that the bright material is actually sodium carbonate– a type of salt typically found around hydrothermal environments here on Earth.

This suggests that the material could have originated inside Ceres and was brought to the surface after Occator Crater formed 80 million years ago.

"This material appears to have come from inside Ceres because an impacting asteroid could not have delivered it," the team reports. 

"The upwelling of this material suggests that temperatures inside Ceres are warmer than previously believed. Impact of an asteroid on Ceres may have helped bring this material up from below, but researchers think an internal process played a role as well."

While the findings might solve the overarching mystery of the bright spots, they also suggest that Ceres might have once been home to some sort ofunderground ocean that stayed in liquid form until coming to the surface and freezing.

NASA

"The minerals we have found at the Occator central bright area require alteration by water," said the team’s lead investigator, Maria Cristina De Sanctis, from the National Institute of Astrophysics in Rome. "Carbonates support the idea that Ceres had interior hydrothermal activity, which pushed these materials to the surface within Occator."

The team figured this out by using NASA’s Dawn spacecraft – which set out to study Ceres back in 2007 – to examine the wavelengths of the reflected light coming off of the bright spots. With these precise measurements, they were able to ascertain what material was causing the reflection.

"It’s amazing how much we have been able to learn about Ceres' interior from Dawn's observations of chemical and geophysical properties. We expect more such discoveries as we mine this treasure trove of data," said the Dawn mission’s principal investigator, Carol Raymond, from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

This isn’t the first time that researchers have hypothesised what the bright spots are made of. Last year, a separate team of researchers pointed to a type ofmagnesium sulphate called hexahydrite – a material that is sort of like Epsom salt – as the cause of the spots. Who doesn't love a good space mystery?

The new study was has been published in Nature.

Scientists are meeting to discuss looking for life on Enceladus

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Scientists are meeting to discuss looking for life on Enceladus

This is our best shot at finding life in the Solar System.

While there's no shortage of exoplanets being discovered these days, finding signs of alien life could be a heck of a lot easier if we stuck to our own Solar System – which is why a group of scientists in the US want to launch a new mission to explore Saturn's icy moon Enceladus.

Despite the inhospitable appearance of Enceladus's frosty surface, scientists think there's a good chance that life could exist in the vast global ocean buried under the moon's icy exterior.

So planetary scientist Carolyn Porco – leader of the imaging team on NASA'sCassini mission currently orbiting Saturn – is helming a new research effort to send another spacecraft to the planet's moon, and this time to specifically look for signs of alien life.

Convening a group of astrobiologists, oceanographers, and organic chemists at the University of California, Berkeley last month, Porco and her fellow researchers are trying to figure out just how a search for extraterrestrial life in Enceladus's ocean would work, and early signs suggest any eventual mission won't be easy.

"[It's] a total bitch of a problem to solve," Porco told Annie Sneed at Scientific American.

The difficulty lies in successfully obtaining enough samples of the liquid water from underneath Enceladus's surface to verify signs of life. NASA originally detected the vast ocean in 2014, and the body of water sends up plumes of water vapour due to hydrothermal activity that stems from gravitational forces exerted on the moon.

It's in these water jets that a spacecraft might be able to detect evidence of life, collecting samples during flight while never actually landing on the surface.

There are more than 90 of these geysers on Enceladus ejecting water vapour, and they could present the perfect opportunity to see what's lurking (or not) under the moon's exterior.

"The plume is coming right out of the ocean, so why would we want to land?" planetary scientist Chris McKay from NASA's Ames Research Centre told Scientific American. "We can get the freshest stuff, coming right from the source."

Just because life could exist in Enceladus's underground ocean, there's no guarantee that scientists will discover it in the limited samples any spacecraft might manage to obtain. But if they do, it would offer evidence for the first time that life on Earth isn't unique, which would obviously be beyond huge.

"You're not just searching for life, you're searching for an understanding of the nature of that life, and how it compares to life on Earth," said McKay. "If life started at least twice in our Solar System, then you know the Universe is full of life."

Finding life won't just tell us that we're not alone. Any organisms detected on Enceladus – and the environment in which they're found – could help explain the beginnings of life on Earth: specifically, whether it originated in the ocean, or on land.

Of course, any Enceladus discovery wouldn't settle the debate for good on that matter, but it could add a lot of supporting evidence to one camp. "It would be a test of one of the ideas about the origin of life," as Porco says.

It's still early days so far, as researchers are only beginning to now tackle the prospect of a potential new exploration of Enceladus, with the Cassini mission scheduled to reach end of life in 2017. But at least the plans are picking up pace, and hopefully one day soon we'll be closer to finding out what Cassini's successor might be.

In the meantime, there's going to be plenty of wrinkles for the scientists involved to iron out.

"We're walking a thin line between what we know based on Earth life and what we expect life would be like otherwise," said researcher Alfonso Davila from the SETI Institute in California. "It's one of the things that prevents us from coming up with a good strategy."

How general relativity is helping scientists map the Universe

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How general relativity is helping scientists map the Universe

It's all lumpy! 

In 1915, Albert Einstein published the theory of general relativity, revolutionising our perception of the Universe. In the theory, space and time are a fabric, permeating even the furthest reaches of the Universe.

As matter and energy press down on this fabric, they actually change its geometry. This, Einstein said, is what causes gravity. As massive objects such as the Sun press down on the fabric of spacetime, other objects, such as Earth, react, orbiting in that curved geometry.

One hundred years later, scientists are using this theory to make precise models of cosmology, allowing them to explore the evolution of the Universe.

Two research teams on both sides of the Atlantic "have shown that precise modelling of the Universe and its contents will change the detailed understanding of the evolution of the Universe and the growth of structure in it", a Case Western University press release says.

Smoothing out the lumps

Up until now, scientists had to study cosmology in an approximate way with pencil and paper.

"The equations of General Relativity are very complicated, involving many different variables," Glenn Starkman, professor of physics and astronomy at Case Western Reserve University, told Business Insider. "You have to follow lots of things that are interrelated in very complicated ways."

To do this, they had to take the Universe, which is lumpy and full of objects denser than the space around them and smooth it out.

"On top of that smooth Universe, we could put very small differences place to place to describe how objects behaved," Starkman said. "But we couldn’t fully incorporate it into a description of how the Universe has evolved."

But over the course of the last 100 years, modern computers have developed, becoming faster and faster. And over the last 20 or 30 years, especially as scientists hunted for gravitational waves emitted by merging black holes, they developed new techniques for studying the complicated equations of General Relativity on computers.

"We didn’t have to make the Universe smooth to follow its evolution," Starkman said. "We could put an inhomogeneous, lumpy universe into the computer and write a program to tell the computer how to use Einstein’s field equations to follow the universe from wherever we started into the future."

You can think of it like a balloon, Starkman said. As you push on it, it responds, stretching and changing shape. When you put a piece of matter or energy somewhere in space and time, it creates a dimple in the fabric. Lots of pieces of matter, spread out over space, create lots of dimples.

What scientists want to know is how all of those dimples behave together and change space and time. Starkman called this "the dance of the dimples".

"It’s such a complicated dance to really follow accurately," Starkman said. "You need to follow it on a computer to be able to tell the difference between what those dimples do exactly and what they would do if you smoothed them out into one large dimple."

These new models will allow scientists to closely follow this dance and check how accurate a picture of the Universe their approximations have given them up until now.

"Some people expect dramatic changes," Starkman said. "They expect the acceleration of the Universe we found 20 years ago to be entirely due to general relativistic effects. Others say we now have to use a new form of energy called dark energy to account for this acceleration. Now we finally have these new tools to explore this."

The symphony of the Universe

So far, the scientists have created simulations of the Universe, which you can think of as many, many consecutive slices of what the Universe might have looked like at various times, Starkman said.

The dimples are kind of like musical notes in the Universe. Up until this point,the Case Western University press release explains, what scientists have been doing is kind of like averaging the music made by a symphony.

The audience would hear a single average note, keeping the overall beat, growing generally louder and softer. These new models allow them to hear the "individual notes and rhythms of each of the orchestra’s instruments".

But, because of the limitations of computers, these models still aren’t perfect. The next step is to make the models better by being able to make the regions they’re studying bigger. They want to add to these notes to fill out the symphony.

"So far we’ve only been able to put a few hundred notes in there," Starkman said. "We want to put thousands or millions of notes in there to get more and more structure in the Universe."

The scientists also want to do an analogue of experiments, pretending that they are observers sitting in the Universe, receiving light from every direction.

Some of the light travels a short way from the nearest galaxy, and some of it travels nearly all the way across the Universe taking billions of years. They want to know what this would look like compared to a smooth Universe, with no dimples, to see to what extent the models are different.

"What’s exciting is that we do appear to be seeing a difference. It is likely there will be measurable differences between how the Universe behaves if it’s perfectly smooth versus when it’s lumpy," Starkman said.

"It’s amazing that it’s taken 100 years, but we are really finally getting to the point where the full power of reneral relativity can be brought to bear on the whole Universe."

This article was originally published by Business Insider.