Monthly Archives: March 2021

Black holes, those gravitational monsters so named because no light can escape their clutches, are by far the most mysterious objects in the universe.

But a new theory proposes that black holes may not be black at all. According to a new study, these black holes may instead be dark stars home to exotic physics at their core. This mysterious new physics may cause these dark stars to emit a strange type of radiation; that radiation could in turn explain all the mysterious dark matter in the universe, which tugs on everything but emits no light.

Related: The 11 biggest unanswered questions about dark matter

Thanks to Einsteins theory of general relativity, which describes how matter warps space-time, we know that some massive stars can collapse in on themselves to such a degree that they just keep collapsing, shrinking down into an infinitely tiny point a singularity.

Once the singularity forms, it surrounds itself with an event horizon. This is the ultimate one-way street in the universe. At the event horizon, the gravitational pull of the black hole is so strong that in order to leave, youd have to travel faster than light does. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is utterly forbidden, anything that crosses the threshold is doomed forever.

Hence, a black hole.

These simple yet surprising statements have held up to decades of observations. Astronomers have watched as the atmosphere of a star gets sucked into a black hole. They've seen stars orbit black holes. Physicists on Earth have heard the gravitational waves emitted when black holes collide. Weve even taken a picture of a black holes "shadow" the hole it carves out from the glow of surrounding gas.

Related: The 12 strangest objects in the universe

And yet, mysteries remain at the very heart of black hole science. The very property that defines a black hole the singularity seems to be physically impossible, because matter cant actually collapse down to an infinitely tiny point.

That means the current understanding of black holes will eventually need to be updated or replaced with something else that can explain what's at the center of a black hole.

But that doesnt stop physicists from trying.

One theory of black hole singularities replaces those infinitely tiny points of infinitely compressed matter with something much more palatable: an incredibly tiny point of incredibly compressed matter. This is called a Planck core, because the idea theorizes that the matter inside a black hole is compressed all the way down to the smallest possible scale, the Planck length, which is 1.6 * 10^ minus 35 meters.

That's small.

With a Planck core, which wouldnt be a singularity, a black hole would no longer host an event horizon there would be no place where the gravitational pull exceeds the speed of light. But to outside observers, the gravitational pull would be so strong that it would look and act like an event horizon. Only extremely sensitive observations, which we do not yet have the technology for, would be able to tell the difference.

Radical problems require radical solutions, and so replacing singularity with Planck core isnt all that far-fetched, even though the theory is barely more than a faint sketch of an outline, one without the physics or mathematics to confidently describe that kind of environment. In other words, Planck cores are the physics equivalent of spitballing ideas.

Thats a useful thing to do, because singularities need some serious out-of-the-box thinking. And there might be some bonus side-effects. Like, for example, explaining the mystery of dark matter.

Dark matter makes up 85% of the mass of the universe, and yet it never interacts with light. We can only determine its existence through its gravitational effects on normal, luminous matter. For example, we can watch stars orbit the centers of the galaxies, and use their orbital speeds to calculate the total amount of mass in those galaxies.

In a new paper, submitted Feb. 15 to the preprint database arXiv, physicist Igor Nikitin at the Fraunhofer Institute for Scientific Algorithms and Computing in Germany takes the radical singularity idea and kicks it up a notch. According to the paper, Planck cores may emit particles (because theres no event horizon, these black holes arent completely black). Those particles could be familiar or something new.

Perhaps, they would be some form of particle that could explain dark matter. If black holes are really Planck stars, Nikitin wrote, and they are constantly emitting a stream of dark matter, they could explain the motions of stars within galaxies.

his idea probably won't hold up to further scrutiny (theres much more evidence for the existence of dark matter than just its effect on the motion of stars). But its a great example of how we need to come up with as many ideas as possible to explain black holes, because we never know what links there may be to other unsolved mysteries in the universe.

Originally published on Live Science.

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Black holes could be dark stars with 'Planck hearts' - Livescience.com

While all eyes were on the dramatic descent of NASAs Perseverance rover last month, a team sent a robot into another alien world, one closer to home: the deep sea.

With its towering undersea mountains, dramatic geological features, and unique creaturesmany of which remain mysteriousthe deep sea is the last uncharted environment on Earth. The inaccessibility isnt surprising. Sinking any intrepid explorer into blackened waters means facing freezing temperatures and crushing pressure. Ever listened to the sound of metal creaking under pressure? Its absolutely terrifying. Without protection, puny electronic components in a robot dont have a chance.

Yet despite these hostile conditions, biologys found a way to thrive. And scientists have taken note. Inspired by a deep sea fish, a team from China engineered a soft autonomous robot that can withstand the punishing conditions of the lowest lowthe bottom of the Mariana Trench. The robots body roughly resembles a stingray, with two large flapping fins and a tail that allows it to easily maneuver through the surrounding waters.

Rather than having a single brain, the robots delicate electronics are spread out through its silicon body, similar to the nervous system of worms. This design removes the need for heavy and clunky pressure-resistant cases, explained Drs. Cecilia Laschi and Marcello Calisti at the National University of Singapore and the University of Lincoln, respectively, who were not involved in the work.

Its not just theoretical talk. The team put their robot to the test, actually sinking it to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean. The robot thrived, flapping around in its surroundings and perhaps intriguing or bewildering native marine animals.

The bot pushes the boundaries of what can be achieved, said Laschi and Calisti. The deep sea is a gold mine of unique biology, enormous geological features, and mineral resources. With a soft but tough-as-nails robot, we may finally have a way to explore uncharted ocean depths.

Maneuvering down the Mariana Trench is harder than scaling Mount Everest without oxygen.

The Challenger Deep, at over 35,000 feet below sea level, represents the lowest point of the trench. The pressure there is hard to wrap your head around: roughly a thousand times the normal atmospheric pressure at sea level, or more colorfully described as an elephant standing on your thumb.

These crazy pressures are why deep sea exploration equipment is normally heavily enforced. Rigid robots and machines require pressure vessels to encapsulate them, the authors explained, which are often made of bulky and cumbersome metallic material. Navigating these depths ends up as a game of playing catch-up, in which the thickness and dimensions of these enclosures need to scale up to cope with increasing pressure. Even so, the extreme conditions of the deep sea make structural failure easy.

By the time classic bots reach the Challenger Deep, theyre basically rigid bots wearing heavy metal glovesclunky and hardly natural. They dont fit in with their surrounding environment, with heavy arms and propellers that can potentially damage any marine, coral, or other samples they pick up.

Thats when marine engineers turned to soft robots. Taking inspiration from marine animals that gracefully maneuver through their surroundingsthe octopus is a favoritescientists tapped silicone and other pliable materials to build soft structures that can stretch and move with ease.

Soft robots are intrinsically safer than their conventional rigid counterparts, with a bunch of boosted capacities, said Laschi and Calisti. For example, they can squeeze into tight spaces, scale across uneven surfaces, and interact with wildlife in a more natural way.

The teams spark of inspiration came with the discovery of a deep sea squishy fish back in 2014, the Mariana hadal snailfish. The worm-like, transparent creature has the snout of a puppy and fins extending from its head. Its favorite habitat? Over 26,000 feet deep in the Mariana Trench. Its discoverer, Dr. Mackenzie Gerringer of the State University of New York, soon reconstructed the strange animal using 3D printing to better understand how it propels itself to swim.

The new study took notes from the snailfish, engineering a similar robot with the ability to withstand tremendous pressure while swimming autonomously. The body of the robot is a fish-like shape with two flapping fins. The fins are attached to the soft core of the bot with muscles, or a soft, stretchy material that converts electrical energy into movement. The bot has a battery to store the juice needed for its movement. When the battery shoots off an electrical current, it stimulates the muscles to contract. Because the muscles are hooked to the fins with a few tiny solid connectors, the muscle movement translates into the entire fin flapping, propelling the robot to swim forward.

The fish-like bot isnt quite the speed runner. When tested in a lab where it swam around a pole, it managed a little less than half a body length per second, which is in line with but slightly slower than other soft robots.

Where it stands out, however, is its ability to deal with crushing pressure. Vetoing the idea of rigid metal protectors, the team instead spaced out the electrical components inside the silicon bodysimilar to how the hadal snailfish organizes its skull. The snailfishs skull isnt completely fused, providing it with a degree of malleability so that the pressure on the skull can equalize to outside pressure.

This stark departure from the usualpacking all electronics together into a single brainpaid off. Lab tests and simulations found that a spread-out configuration reduced pressure on any single interface between component, meaning that the robots brain acted more as a flexible slinky than a rigidly-tethered nervous system.

The team didnt stop at lab testing. They went for the real thing: field testing in the real world. In all, they put their bot into three different environments: around 230 feet in a lake, over 10,000 feet in the South China Sea, and finally the ultimate challenge, the Challenger Deep.

In the first two trials, the robot was allowed to swim free, going about two inches per second at the fastest. For the Mariana Trench test, the bot was connected to a conventional underwater robot for support and photo ops while it flapped its wings. Under extreme pressure, the bot worked like a charm.

The bot could be a game-changer in how we explore the deep seaespecially its teeming, bizarre marine life. Compared to traditional metallic robotic grippers, the soft bot can gently handle living specimens without scaring them off or damaging them.

It paves the way to a new generation of deep-sea explorers, said Laschi and Calisti.

Theres much to improve on. One thing is speed. While self-powered and controlled, the trench bot nevertheless swims slower than previously reported underwater bots. Its more sensitive, in that it can be easily swept away by underwater currents. Looking ahead, itll also need to be equipped with cameras and intelligent sensors to capture its environment. Even so, the bot lays the foundations for future generations of resilient and reliable deep-sea explorers, said Laschi and Calisti.

In the long term, swarms of trench bots could unveil the mysteries of the deep sea while monitoring its health. Soft robots could safely navigate coral forests or underwater caves, picking up specimens without damaging the environment. They could also spread across the seabed to monitor for pollution, microplastics, or changes in marine life. But more fundamentally, like armies of Mars rovers, we may finally have a way to explore the mysteries hiding at the depths of our great oceans. Who knows what well find?

Image Credit: Li et al./NPG Press

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This Stingray-Like Soft Robot Made It 35,000 Feet Below Sea Leveland Thrived There - Singularity Hub

Bedivere (Mamoru Miyano) in Fate/Grand Order the Movie Divine Realm of the Round Table: Camelot Wandering; Agateram. (PHOTO: Odex)

Rating: PG Runtime: 90 minutes Director: Kei Suezawa Writer: Ukyo Kodachi Voice Cast: Mamoru Miyano, Nobunaga Shimazaki, Rie Takahashi, Maaya Sakamoto, Takahiro Mizushima, Miyuki Sawashiro, Ryotaro Okiayu, Koki Uchiyama, Satoshi Tsuruoka, and Minami Tanaka.

Score: 2 out of 5 stars

The wonderful thing about franchises comprising standalone stories, such as Fate/Grand Order, is that each story can be told as a self-contained component in different mediums, without requiring the viewer to know the entire backstory beforehand (such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe). The latest chapter of the Fate/Grand Order franchise is a movie, Fate/Grand Order The Movie Divine Realm Of The Round Table: Camelot Wandering; Agateram (what a mouthful!), that adapts the sixth chapter of the titular game, which features the Knights of the Round Table and Camelot.

Mordred (Miyuki Sawashiro) in Fate/Grand Order the Movie Divine Realm of the Round Table: Camelot Wandering; Agateram. (PHOTO: Odex)

In this adaptation from the Fate/Grand Order game, the two main protagonists arrive in a Singularity era where the Knights of the Round Table terrorise the Holy City of Camelot. As they try to figure out who are friends and foes, the crisis grows worse, and failing to resolve it could spell disaster for all of humanity. It will be followed by a second film, Fate/Grand Order The Movie Divine Realm Of the Round Table: Camelot Paladin; Agateram.

This is definitely a film for fans, because there is so much explanation required just to understand the premise of Fate/Grand Order that the movie completely does away with it. Here's a short explainer. The Fate/Grand Order franchise began with the game, one of the most popular mobile games in Japan. Humanity is threatened by disruptions to history, known as Singularities. The players are sent to resolve said Singularities by summoning monsters, known as Servants, to fight. Along the way, they learn that there are other agencies which are determined to interfere with the history of humanity. The game's storyline is divided into chapters, which each centre around a particular time period that has been disrupted by a Singularity.

Story continues

Leonardo da Vinci (Maaya Sakamoto) in Fate/Grand Order the Movie Divine Realm of the Round Table: Camelot Wandering; Agateram (PHOTO: Odex)

Of course, if you're a fan, you'll know all this, and you'd be keen to just dive in to see how the anime realises the game world on the big screen, as well as seeing how Bedivere, Gawain and the like appear as characters on screen. The film does a good job of trying to include as many characters as possible from the Camelot chapter of the game, at the expense of character development and screen time. You'd probably get to see your favourite character, but not in a way that feels all that satisfying.

Ritsuka Fujimaru (Nobunaga Shimazaki) in Fate/Grand Order the Movie Divine Realm of the Round Table: Camelot Wandering; Agateram (PHOTO: Odex)

That's because the story is rather... lopsided. On one hand, it can be rather languid in how it progresses. On the other hand, it rushes through events just to get you to the final battle in the climax of the movie. It doesn't provide enough exposition, while having too many long drawn out conversations which don't get anywhere. You might see your favourite character, but you won't really feel you've met him or her, simply because it's so awkwardly put together. Understandably, the writer was trying to cram the events of an entire game's chapter into a pair of 90 minute movies. Nevertheless, there's a distinct lack of elegance or even subtlety in the storytelling. It feels like it's just plodding along a formulaic plot (which it is, given that it's based on the game), rather than organically pushing the characters forward in a good story.

If you're here for the fights... it gets better towards the end. The first half of the movie has some action, but they're mainly trying to get to the second half where the bigger, better fights take place. Unfortunately, this strategy means that you might lose interest in the first half of the film. If you already know the premise and all the characters, the first part of the film is not mandatory viewing.

Lancelot (Ryotaro Okiayu) in Fate/Grand Order the Movie Divine Realm of the Round Table: Camelot Wandering; Agateram (PHOTO: Odex)

The animation does a great job at evoking the grandeur and majesty of the various locations, as well as giving us fluid action when the film calls for it. The character designs are faithful to the game, although there are some details that were removed (for ease of animation) that might annoy more observant fans. Nevertheless, it still fits in with the style of the game's cutscenes.

The second half gets better, mainly when they've gotten all the exposition out of the way. It is definitely targetted at fans, given that very little of the premise is explained. As a movie based on a game, it hit most of the right notes. Be sure to stay to the end for a post-credits preview of the sequel, Paladin; Agateram.

Fate/Grand Order The Movie opens in cinemas:- 11 March 2021 (Singapore). Sneaks are available on 6 March 2021.

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Fate/Grand Order The Movie - Camelot, Part 1 review: Crammed storyline gets better in second half - Yahoo Philippines News

I am sure you have all read and written the words Big Bang Theory several times in your school during Science class and that's what everybody believes about how Universe came into existence. But, recently four scientists from different parts of India, including two from Bengaluru, have challenged this old theory through their finding on the observation of the red shift in the light spectrum. Therefore, we thought of reminding you about the Big Bang Theory, who gave it to the world and why it is challenged now?

What is the Big Bang Theory?The Big Bang Theory tell us how the universe came into existence. Scientists and astrophysicists believe thatthe Universe was born out of a highly compressed, dense and microscopic point called singularity. This exploded with a huge force some 13.8 billion years ago, resulting in everything arising from that singularity moving outward in all directions. From this, all cosmic matter was formed at different stages until now.

Who gave this theory and who coined the phrase Big Bang to it?Georges Lematre, a Belgian priest, first suggested the big bang theory in the 1920s, when he said that the universe began from a single primordial atom. It was Fred Hoyle, an English Astronomer who coined the term Big Bang during one of the interviews broadcasted on BBC radio. He also stated that the first life on Earth only beganin the space.

Did the scientists prove the Big Bang Theory scientifically?There is no particular evidence or proof priorto the Singularity phenomena. It is also believed that nothing can be proven true of false when it comes to natural science. However, the detailed measurements of the expansion of the universe show that Big Bang might have happened 13.8 billions of years ago and that is the exact age of the universe.

Who has challenged the Big Bang Theory recently?Prof Sisir Roy from the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bengaluru,Arindam Mal from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Ahmedabadand Sarbani Palit and Ujjwal Bhattacharya from the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata have published a research paper and challenged the Big Bang Theory.

What are these four scientists and astrophysicists from India trying to prove in their research paper?The Big Bang theory is supported by the understanding that the shift of light towards the red band in the spectrum is continuous and uniform in nature. It is an indication of all matter including galaxies and all cosmic matter moving outwards steadily. But the four scientists have revealed findings contrary to the continuous and uniform nature of movement of light towards the red band of light in the spectrum.Theresearchers have found that the red shift does not occur in a uniform manner, but in recurring stages, what they refer to as periodicity in red shift

Did any other theories challenge the Big Bang Theory earlier?This is not the first time that the Big Bang theory has been challenged, the previous challenges were based on much smaller sample sizes. The Steady State Theory, Gravitational Lending Model, Tired Photon Hypothesis, Variable Mass Hypothesis have all challenged the Big Bang theory in the past.

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What the FAQ: What is the Big Bang theory and why is it being challenged by four Indian scientists? - EdexLive

Black holes, those gravitational monsters so named because no light can escape their clutches, are by far the most mysterious objects in the universe.

But a new theory proposes that black holes may not be black at all. According to a new study, these black holes may instead be dark stars home to exotic physics at their core. This mysterious new physics may cause these dark stars to emit a strange type of radiation; that radiation could in turn explain all the mysterious dark matter in the universe, which tugs on everything but emits no light.

Related: The 11 biggest unanswered questions about dark matter

Thanks to Einsteins theory of general relativity, which describes how matter warps space-time, we know that some massive stars can collapse in on themselves to such a degree that they just keep collapsing, shrinking down into an infinitely tiny point a singularity.

Once the singularity forms, it surrounds itself with an event horizon. This is the ultimate one-way street in the universe. At the event horizon, the gravitational pull of the black hole is so strong that in order to leave, youd have to travel faster than light does. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is utterly forbidden, anything that crosses the threshold is doomed forever.

Hence, a black hole.

These simple yet surprising statements have held up to decades of observations. Astronomers have watched as the atmosphere of a star gets sucked into a black hole. Theyve seen stars orbit black holes. Physicists on Earth have heard the gravitational waves emitted when black holes collide. Weve even taken a picture of a black holes shadow the hole it carves out from the glow of surrounding gas.

Related: The 12 strangest objects in the universe

And yet, mysteries remain at the very heart of black hole science. The very property that defines a black hole the singularity seems to be physically impossible, because matter cant actually collapse down to an infinitely tiny point.

That means the current understanding of black holes will eventually need to be updated or replaced with something else that can explain whats at the center of a black hole.

But that doesnt stop physicists from trying.

One theory of black hole singularities replaces those infinitely tiny points of infinitely compressed matter with something much more palatable: an incredibly tiny point of incredibly compressed matter. This is called a Planck core, because the idea theorizes that the matter inside a black hole is compressed all the way down to the smallest possible scale, the Planck length, which is 1.6 * 10^ minus 35 meters.

Thats small.

With a Planck core, which wouldnt be a singularity, a black hole would no longer host an event horizon there would be no place where the gravitational pull exceeds the speed of light. But to outside observers, the gravitational pull would be so strong that it would look and act like an event horizon. Only extremely sensitive observations, which we do not yet have the technology for, would be able to tell the difference.

Radical problems require radical solutions, and so replacing singularity with Planck core isnt all that far-fetched, even though the theory is barely more than a faint sketch of an outline, one without the physics or mathematics to confidently describe that kind of environment. In other words, Planck cores are the physics equivalent of spitballing ideas.

Thats a useful thing to do, because singularities need some serious out-of-the-box thinking. And there might be some bonus side-effects. Like, for example, explaining the mystery of dark matter.

Dark matter makes up 85% of the mass of the universe, and yet it never interacts with light. We can only determine its existence through its gravitational effects on normal, luminous matter. For example, we can watch stars orbit the centers of the galaxies, and use their orbital speeds to calculate the total amount of mass in those galaxies.

In a new paper, submitted Feb. 15 to the preprint database arXiv, physicist Igor Nikitin at the Fraunhofer Institute for Scientific Algorithms and Computing in Germany takes the radical singularity idea and kicks it up a notch. According to the paper, Planck cores may emit particles (because theres no event horizon, these black holes arent completely black). Those particles could be familiar or something new.

Perhaps, they would be some form of particle that could explain dark matter. If black holes are really Planck stars, Nikitin wrote, and they are constantly emitting a stream of dark matter, they could explain the motions of stars within galaxies.

his idea probably wont hold up to further scrutiny (theres much more evidence for the existence of dark matter than just its effect on the motion of stars). But its a great example of how we need to come up with as many ideas as possible to explain black holes, because we never know what links there may be to other unsolved mysteries in the universe.

Originally published on Live Science.

Continued here:

Black holes might be darkish stars with 'Planck hearts' - The Shepherd of the Hills Gazette

Black holes are the most enigmatic objects in the universe. They form when massive stars collapse in on themselves, under their own gravity when they run out of nuclear fuel. Inside black holes, matter is compressed to a single point, the infamous singularity where time ends.

The existence of black holes poses is a paradox. It is as if physics destroys itself. As such, black holes play a role in science similar to that of atoms a century ago. According to the laws of physics at the time, atoms could not exist. But experiments taught us that nature had found a solution. This eventually led to the discovery of quantum theory which changed the way we conceive the world and opened up a technological revolution that continues today.

Black holes are the atoms of the 21st century. Their existence reminds us of the biggest open question in physics: how to reconcile the macroscopic world of gravity and cosmology with the quantum world of nuclear and particle physics. We have every reason to expect that the unification of these two perspectives will be as revolutionary as the discovery of quantum theory a century ago. But how can we experiment with black holes? This is where gravitational waves come in.

When black holes in the distant universe collide and merge, they shake the very fabric of space, creating wavelike disturbances of space-time, known as gravitational waves. These gravitational waves travel outward at the speed of light, rippling undisturbed through the universe and carrying a truly immense amount of energy. In its final instant, a single merger of a black hole pair can emit more energy into gravitational waves than the combined power of all light radiated by all the stars in the observable universe.

Yet, the amplitude of gravitational waves is extremely small because space-time is extraordinarily stiff. Nevertheless, on 14th September 2015, by ingeniously employing laser interferometers to monitor the length of several miles long vacuum tubes to a precision of a thousandth of the width of a single proton, the LIGO Scientific and Virgo Collaborations (LVC) succeeded for the first time to detect a burst of gravitational waves passing through our planet. Analysis based on Einsteins relativity theory revealed that this resulted from the inward spiral and merger, more than a billion years ago, of a pair of black holes of around 30 solar masses each. Subsequent observation runs harvested several tens of such gravitational wave bursts, originating from a wide variety of coalescing black holes and neutron stars.

These groundbreaking detections unlock the dark side of the universe. Gravitational waves provide a new sense for scientists to explore the universe. Their observation yields access to hitherto unexplored regions of the universe that are dark, including the environment near black holes, or where light cant penetrate, such as the earliest stages after the big bang. Their rich discovery potential spans fields ranging from astrophysics and cosmology to nuclear physics and high-energy physics.

However, to exploit the scientific potential of gravitational waves, a new observatory is needed. This is Einstein Telescope, a stunning marvel of engineering envisaged as a triangular configuration of six nested laser interferometers with 10km arms constructed deep underground, operated at cryogenic temperatures and employing innovative technologies in optics, metrology, seismic isolation plus sensor and control systems.

Einstein Telescope is the European entry ticket to take the lead worldwide in gravitational wave science. Funded through Interreg V-A Belgium The Netherlands and Euregio Meuse-Rhine programmes, a Consortium of nearly 20 research institutions and universities from The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and France are collaborating on a prototype, Einstein Telescope Pathfinder, conceived to develop and de-risk some of the key novel technologies on which Einstein Telescope relies.

With the political support of five European countries, Belgium, Poland, Spain and The Netherlands, led by Italy, the Einstein Telescope Consortium comprising about 40 research institutions and universities, located also in France, Germany, Hungary, Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, has submitted a proposal to the 2021 update of the ESFRI roadmap of the European Strategic Forum for Research Infrastructure to realise Einstein Telescope.

When Einstein Telescope will be operational in the early 2030s, it will annually detect up to a million gravitational wave bursts from sources distributed throughout the entire universe. Employing new computing methods based on artificial intelligence, its data will enable scientists to probe the nature of gravity under the most extreme conditions and to read the universes history with unprecedented precision all the way back to the dark ages, the era before the formation of the first stars.

Einstein Telescope is what one terms a cathedral project, the modern equivalent of the grand church buildings, that has the potential to inspire grand new ideas that fundamentally change the way we look at the world.

Of course, some feel that limited resources for science should be deployed in areas such as those addressing climate change, rather than blue-sky research. These views can be persuasive, but are misleading. Fundamental research is every bit as important as directed research, and through the virtuous circle of science and innovation, they are mutually dependent. Facilities of the calibre of Einstein Telescope act as magnets that bring together bright minds from a wide range of backgrounds and countries in a stimulating eco-system in which creative and innovative research, ground-breaking entrepreneurship and unique educational opportunities reinforce each other and thrive.

Colliding black holes matter because the mind-bending concepts and the sheer depth of the questions they encourage us to explore, provide a uniquely powerful trigger to reimagine our world. And it is the power to reimagine that will ultimately be humanitys biggest asset in the coming decades when we carve out our long-term future on this planet of ours and beyond.

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Gravitational wave science in Europe: Einstein Telescope and beyond - Open Access Government