Intrepid researchers at MIT and Caltech have done what was thought impossible: an end run around nature. They have finessed spooky quantum vacuum –the ground state of energy for the Universe and the source of all potentiality– without violating the laws of nature that will allow the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) to detect ghostly signals, the whispers of gravitational waves, ripples in spacetime at the quantum level, with weekly frequency.
Could there be as yet unknown supermassive objects lurking at the hearts of galaxies other than black holes? An object so strange that it has managed to avoid gravitational collapse to form a singularity, the smallest object in the universe in an infinitely Planck-scale space? Where density and gravity become infinite and space-time curves infinitely, and where the laws of physics as we know them cease to operate?
“Among Bennu’s many surprises, the particle ejections sparked our curiosity, and we’ve spent the last several months investigating this mystery,” said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona about the objects active discharging of particles into space. “This is a great opportunity to expand our knowledge of how asteroids behave.”
Since it’s launch in 2018, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has returned unprecedented data from near the Sun, culminating in new discoveries published on Dec. 4, 2019, in the journal Nature revealing that the dynamics of our star are even stranger than once imagined.