Black holes are the most terrifying places in the universe. Created when a giant star dies, at their hearts is a point of infinite gravity so powerful nothing can escape it, not even light. Horizon: What is Reality? BBC 2011
The entire universe is defying gravity. Horizon: How Big is the Universe? BBC 2012
Cosmologists don’t know what Dark Energy is, they only know what it does. When gravity pulls, Dark Energy pushes. ibid.
Dark Matter is fighting a losing battle. ibid.
The entire observable universe is saturated in Dark Energy. ibid.
Scientists in the United States say they have found the first direct evidence of what happened in the first moments of the universe. Horizon: The Hunt for Gravitational Waves, news report, BBC 2015
How the universe was born – this is the inside story of the greatest scientific quest of our time. ibid.
First predicted by Albert Einstein almost a century ago, they are invisible disturbances in the fabric of space and time itself. ibid.
The hot Big Bang model was about to get rewritten: Guth’s inflation. ibid.
How did inflation come to an end? ibid.
This is the story of an incredible scientific adventure. Of an unlikely collection of scientists and engineers, dreamers and schemers who are attempting the impossible – to control Gravity. Horizon: Project Greenglow: The Quest for Gravity Control, BBC 2016
A dark and dinghy science – like modern-day alchemy, it promises a glittering prize but it can destroy a reputation. ibid.
‘It’s ten to the power of forty weaker [than electromagnetism of a fridge magnet].’ ibid. Clifford
When Greenglow ended, the hope of mastering gravity seemed to end with it. ibid.
Does antimatter fall down or up? ibid.
Evidence from the cosmos seems to suggest that negative gravity does exist. ibid.
Theory: negative mass is the perfect way to create the ultimate propulsion device: a warp drive. ibid. viz Martin
When a star a hundred times heavier than our Sun switches off it goes with a bang. While we see the outward explosion as a supernova, this masks the inward implosion. The core is collapsing into the most dangerous object in the universe; the density becomes so great in the centre that Gravity sucks in Time and Space itself. Universe: Stars
The Big Bang singularity gave rise to the entire universe, which includes Space, Time and all the matter that fills it. A similar type of singularity is a white hole – a theoretic object that arises in Einstein’s theory of Gravity. It’s essentially a black hole in reverse. A point of singularity where matter is ejected. Consequently, some scientists have wondered if the universe could have been created from a white hole. The Universe s2e2: Cosmic Holes, History 2007
And if one black hole isn’t violent enough, try two black holes duelling for dominance. In the vastness of space black holes occasionally pair off. It may appear as though they are engaged in some sort of cosmic courtship, but these unions are anything but harmonious. When two black holes get too close they become trapped by each other’s gravity. The two orbit around each other like whirling dervishes. These binary black holes will eventually collide and coalesce. ibid.
When black holes collide they create wild vibrations called gravitational waves. Which spread across the fabric of Space and Time. ibid.
A black hole is a region of space where the pull of gravity is so immense that nothing can escape it, not even light. There are billions upon billions of these black monsters prowling the universe. They come in two sizes: most of them are the stellar mass black holes, which are about five to about a hundred times the mass of our sun. And then there are supermassive black holes that are millions to billions of times the mass of the sun. The Universe s2e16: Biggest Things in the Universe
It is both mighty and meek. Humanity’s quest is to harness its power and escape its bonds. It creates and breaks the stars, the planets, the galaxies, and directs their cosmic rollercoaster ride. Without it life as we know it would end. It is the magnificent and mystifying force that rules the universe: Gravity. The Universe s2e17: Gravity
Gravity is the most pervasive force in the universe. It is at work on massive and minute scales. On the routine and the extreme. ibid.
It acts on everything with mass including us ... Gravity attracts, governs, warps, shapes, makes and takes all matter and mass in the universe. Gravity holds our solar system together ... The cosmic glue that binds together all matter in the universe ... Gravity’s pulling power depends on mass and distance. In other words the bigger it is the harder it pulls on other objects. But that’s not all. This means if you double the distance between two objects, the attraction or pull is only a quarter of its original strength. ibid.
Objects all fall at the same rate. But what would it take to launch a cannon ball into orbit? ... 17,500 miles per hour. ibid.
Whichever two cities you connect with a straight-line tunnel it takes Gravity exactly forty-two minutes to get you there. Newton’s mathematics explained why this works. The angle slows the speed of descent. ibid.
Einstein realised that Gravity is really caused by huge objects likes stars and planets literally bending space itself. ibid.
Acceleration is essentially the same as Gravity. ibid.
Whereas the Big Crunch fits the Christian vision of the end, Science has yet another theory: that it may instead all end in ice. Ultimately, it depends on whether the momentum of the expansion of the universe can overcome the collapsing attraction of Gravity. The Universe s2e18: Cosmic Apocalypse
There may be other worlds out there. Where there could be an exact copy of our solar system, our Earth and each one of us. The Universe s3e2: Parallel Universes
The universe sits in a sea of parallel universes. ibid.
Remarkably, there may be four types of parallel universe out there: one could exist in exactly the same space that we are in, but it is so far away we cannot see it or reach it. In another scenario, multiple giant universes could exist in giant cosmic soap bubbles adrift in a cosmic sea of giant bubbles. In yet another scenario, many parallel universes occupy the same space and times as our universe, but because they are in different dimensions, they are invisible. In yet another, all the laws of physics are different so everything looks completely different. ibid.
The Wmap seems to show that the universe is flat. ibid.
‘We are children of the bubble.’ ibid. Tegmark
When In the 1980s scientists came up with a lyrical-sounding idea – String Theory – it promised to solve all the mysteries of the universe, including whether or not parallel universes are real. The idea is that all particles are not solid points or dots, as science said they were. Instead, if you could see up close, particles are in fact tiny string-like objects that individually vibrate in various ways ... String Theory has now evolved into M or membrane theory. ibid.
The crowning achievement of M Theory came when scientists realised that to make sense of everything, you need to think of the universe as existing in eleven dimensions. M Theory explains how the tiniest as well as the biggest things in the cosmos work. It also proposes that we all live on a giant and energetic membrane. Our universe is tethered to this wall by extra dimensions ... These membranes are also very close to each other. ibid.
Einstein’s theory predicts a class of objects with such intense Gravity that nothing, not even light, can escape their grasp. He called them dark stars. But he didn’t believe they really existed. As it turned out his theory was right. There is a kind of star that grows so heavy that it collapses under its own weight. The mass of many suns is sucked down to a tiny single point. Unfolding Universe, Discovery 2002
In our galaxy alone there may be millions. ibid.
The supermassive black hole is three million times the weight of the sun squeezed smaller than a speck of dust. But this tiny object is one of the most veracious predators in the universe: it eats stars. ibid.
Albert Einstein realised that a man in the emptiness of space would not be able to detect whether he was falling under Gravity. Einstein called this a happy idea. But in 1960, five years after Einstein’s death, Joe Kittinger made the idea a reality. He was part of a US Air Force team studying the effects of high altitude on the human body. He never achieved the fame of Yuri Gagarin and Neil Armstrong, but to all intents and purposes Joe Kittinger was the first man in space. Three hours after lift-off his balloon was thirty kilometres above the Earth, three times higher than a jet airliner. And then, carrying a film camera, Kittinger did something amazing: he jumped. High above the clouds in the incredibly thin air Kittinger had no sense of falling ... Kittinger was the first man to reach the speed of sound without an aircraft. ibid.
In one scenario Gravity pulls the universe back into itself ... This is the Big Crunch ... Then there’s the Big Chill. The universe expands until the nuclear furnaces that power all the stars burn out. The universe grows cold and dies. Then again there could be a much more spectacular end in which everything is ripped to shreds down to the last atom. Death of the Universe, History 2008