10 discoveries that prove Einstein was right about the universe — and 1 that proves him wrong

Legendary physicist Albert Einstein was a thinker ahead of his time. Born March 14, 1879, Einstein entered a world where the dwarf planet Pluto had yet to be discovered, and the idea of spaceflight was a distant dream. Despite the technical limitations of his time, Einstein published his famous theory of general relativity in 1915, which made predictions about the nature of the universe that would be proven accurate time and again for more than 100 years to come.

Here are 10 recent observations that proved Einstein was right about the nature of the cosmos a century ago — and one that proved him wrong.

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Study reveals how ionising radiation damages DNA and causes cancer

For the first time, researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and their collaborators have been able to identify in human cancers two characteristic patterns of DNA damage caused by ionising radiation. These fingerprint patterns may now enable doctors to identify which tumours have been caused by radiation, and investigate if they should be treated differently. Published in Nature Communications today, the results will also help to explain how radiation can cause cancer.

Ionising radiation, such as gamma rays, X-rays and radioactive particles can cause cancer by damaging DNA. However, how this happens, or how many tumours are caused by radiation damage has not been known.

Read more at Science News

Water helps assembly of biofibers that could capture sunlight

When it comes to water, some materials have a split personality - and some of these materials could hold the key to new ways of harnessing solar energy. These small assemblies of organic molecules have parts that are hydrophobic, or water-fearing, while other parts are hydrophilic, or water-loving. Because of their schizoid nature, micelles organize themselves into spheres that have their hydrophilic parts turned out while their hydrophobic parts are shielded inside.

Read more at Science News

Black Holes – Resonance Physics

 

Everything spins. Ever stop to think about that? I really hadn’t until I took the Resonance Academy course and they made this point. Super galactic clusters spin. Galaxies spin. Solar systems spin. The Earth spins (rotates on its axis). Electrons whirl around the nuclei of atoms.

When this spin speeds up, something very interesting can happen. According to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, mass is a function of speed, with the speed of light as an upper boundary. Why is the speed of light an upper boundary? Because as anything approaches the speed of light, its mass increases to infinity

Read more at Plantaryphilosophy 

GENE JEANIE SCIENTISTS UNRAVEL AN INTRIGUING LINK BETWEEN MEDITATION AND IMMUNITY

For Vijayendran Chandran, a neuroscientist at the University of Florida, the event at the Tennessee mountain retreat center provided an excellent chance to examine the impact of meditation at the molecular level within the body. Because participants’ diet and sleep schedules were closely monitored, he could compare before-and-after blood samples and know that those factors weren’t influencing any changes seen.

“It’s very well-controlled,” Chandran told Inverse. “Everyone eats the same, everyone sleeps the same.”

Meditation seemed to activate genes associated with the immune system. Specifically, Chandran and his co-authors found 220 genes known to be involved in generating an immune response that was effectively turned up following the retreat.

Read more at Inverse

Is the universe actually a fractal?

 If you take a look at the structures that form in the Universe, many of the things we see on large scales appears at smaller scales, too. The dark matter halos that form around the largest bound structures we know of appear identical to the ones that form around Milky Way-sized galaxies, as well as the tiny substructure clumps that exist both around smaller galaxies and in intergalactic space itself. On the largest scales in the Universe, gravitation is the only force that matters. Under many circumstances, if you wait long enough, gravitational collapse will produce identical structures, just scaled up or down in size depending on the size of your system.

The idea that, if you zoom in far enough, you’ll eventually encounter a structure that repeats the initial pattern you saw on larger scales, is mathematically realized in the concept of a fractal. When similar patterns repeatedly emerge at smaller and smaller scales, we can analyze them mathematically and see if they have the same statistical characteristics as the larger structures; if they do, it’s fractal-like in nature. So, is the Universe itself a fractal?

The answer appears to be almost, but not quite. Here’s the science behind why.

Read More at Big Think

Endless Creation Out of Nothing: Could our universe have been an experiment by an ancient civilization?

 

Credit: Getty Images

Astronauts describe the emptiness and darkness of space far from Earth as a startling experience. So did the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, in a poem e-mailed to me by writer Dror Burstein. Without ever having ventured into space (obviously), Rilke wrote a century ago: “Night, shuddering in my regard, but in yourself so steady; inexhaustible creation, enduring beyond the fate of earth.”


Is there a modern scientific interpretation to Rilke’s poem?

The reality is that space in neither empty nor dark. Even outside galaxies, an astronaut could find at least one proton, on average, in every cubic meter. Also, one electron and half a billion photons and neutrinos, all left over from the big bang.  Still, one might naively imagine that the space in between these particles is empty. Indeed, the early atomists in ancient Greece thought that the vacuum is literally nothing.

Read more at Scientific America