The final piece of the puzzle in Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity is about to fall into place, according to reports.
An announcement tomorrow morning (NZT) from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics is expected to focus on the discovery of gravitational waves from the Big Bang, reports the Guardian.
Gravitational waves are described by the paper as "minuscule ripples in the fabric of the universe that carry energy across space", predicted by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity but so far have eluded detection due to their weakness.
If the speculation is true, it would boost the theory that in the first nanosecond of its existence the universe underwent a rapid expansion, increasing in size by factor of 10 to the power of 78 (that's 10 followed by 78 zeros).
Cosmologists have been looking for evidence of gravitational waves imprinted on the radiation this inflation left behind, blown up to detectable levels.
"It's been called the Holy Grail of cosmology," cosmologist Hiranya Peiris told the Guardian. "It would be a real major, major, major discovery."
The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has refused to comment on the speculation.
3 News
source: newshub archive
