space-time

A wrinkle in space-time

July 20, 2012

[+]

Shock wave around supernova 1987A captured by the Hubble Space Telescope (credit: NASA, ESA, K. France (University of Colordo, Boulder), P. Challis and R. Kirshner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)/Wikimedia Commons)

Mathematicians at UC Davis have come up with a new way to crinkle up the fabric of space-time — at least in theory.

“We show that space-time cannot be locally flat at a point where two shock waves collide,” said Blake Temple, professor of mathematics at UC Davis. “This is a new kind of singularity in general relativity.”

Background

Einstein’s theory of general relativity explains gravity as a curvature in space-time. But the theory starts from the assumption that any local patch of space-time looks flat, Temple said.

A singularity is a patch of space-time that cannot be made to look flat in any coordinate system, Temple said. One example of a singularity is inside a black hole, where the curvature of space becomes extreme./.../