# Presentation: 524098

## WHAT POWERED THE BIG BANG?

- WHAT HAPPENSAT THE EDGEOF A BLACK HOLE?

- WHAT ISDARK ENERGY?

- National  Aeronautics andSpace Administration

## Three startling outcomes of Einstein’s general relativity:

The expansion of the Universe (from a Big Bang)

Black holes

A Cosmological Constant acting against the pull of gravity

**The expansion of the Universe (from a Big Bang)**
**Black holes**
**A Cosmological Constant acting against the pull of gravity**

**Observations confirm these outcomes . . . **
**	**

- Einstein’s Predictions

## What Powered the Big Bang?

- Inflation
- (Big Bang plus
- 10-34 Seconds)

- Big Bang plus 300,000 Years

- Big Bang plus
- 15 Billion Years

**Gravitational Waves Can Escape from Earliest Moments of the Big Bang**

- Now

- gravitational waves

- light

## What Happens at the Edge of a Black Hole?

**Chandra deep image reveals Black Holes are ubiquitous**
**Each point of x-ray light is a Black Hole!**

*Black Holes are a prediction of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity and can be used to test the theory in the strongest possible gravity fields*

## What is Dark Energy?

**We do not know what 95% of the universe is made of!**

*Dark Energy is causing the expansion of the Universe to accelerate. Solving this mystery will fundamentally change our view of the Universe!*

## Completing Einstein’s Legacy

**What powered the Big Bang?**
**What happens at the edge of a Black Hole?**
**What is the mysterious Dark Energy pulling the Universe apart?**

- Einstein’s legacy is incomplete, his theory fails to explain the underlying physics of the very phenomena his work predicted
- We are on the threshold of a breakthrough comparable to Einstein’s breakthrough discoveries a century ago....

- Beyond Einstein is a NASA program that will employ a series of missions linked by powerful new technologies and common science goals to answer the questions

## Beyond Einstein Program

- WMAP

- LIGO

- Hubble

- Chandra

- GLAST

**Science and Technology Precursors**

## Realizing Science Beyond Einstein

_***Einstein Observatories***_ **providing breakthrough capabilities to address Beyond Einstein science:**
- LISA: Gravitational waves from merging Black Holes
- Constellation-X: Observe matter falling into Black Holes & address the mysteries of Dark Matter and Dark Energy
_***Einstein Probes***_ **address focused science questions:**
- How does Dark Energy evolve?
- Can we detect the Big Bang?
- How many Black Holes are there?
_**Education & outreach program**_**, technology investments, and theoretical studies towards the vision**
- Inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers

*Three inter-linked elements that work together:*

## The Constellation-X Mission

**A Constellation of X-ray telescopes for high resolution spectroscopy:**
**25-100 times sensitivity gain over Chandra**
**Baseline of four space-craft working as a single large telescope**

**Black Holes:**** **
**Probe close to the event horizon **
**Evolution with Cosmic Time**
**Dark Matter and Dark Energy**
**Clusters of galaxies pin down the expansion of the universe**
**Origin of the elements, New States of matter, Cosmic Feedback**

**The National Academy of Sciences decadal survey ranked Constellation-X the next priority after JWST in the large space observatories category **
**&**
**Endorsed in the NAS Turner Committee Quarks to Cosmos Report**

##  Constellation-X Science Objectives

***Black Holes***
- Observe hot matter spiraling into **Black Holes **to test the effects of General Relativity
- Spectroscopy of the faint Chandra sources to trace the evolution of **Black Holes** with cosmic time

***Origin of the Elements, New States of matter, Cosmic Feedback***
- Search for the hot missing matter in the Cosmic Web and investigate the influence of **Black Holes** on galaxy formation
- Study the behavior of matter in extreme environments e.g. **neutron stars**

***Dark Matter and Dark Energy***
- Use clusters of galaxies to trace the locations of **Dark Matter** and as independent probes to constrain the amount and evolution of **Dark Energy**

## LISA Overview

- The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is a joint ESA-NASA mission to design, build and operate the first space-based gravitational wave detector
- The 5 million kilometer long detector will consist of three spacecraft orbiting the Sun in a triangular formation
- Space-time strains induced by gravitational waves are detected by measuring changes in the separation of fiducial masses with laser interferometry to 1/100th the size of an atom

- LISA is expected to detect signals from merging supermassive black holes, compact stellar objects spiraling into supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei, thousands of close binaries of compact objects in the Milky Way and possibly backgrounds of cosmological origin
- LISA a high priority in moderate mission class in National Academy of Sciences McKee-Taylor decadal survey & endorsed in the Turner Committee Quarks to Cosmos Report

## LISA Science Goals & Sources

- Merging supermassive black holes
- Merging intermediate-mass/seed black holes
- Gravitational captures
- Galactic and verification binaries
- Cosmological backgrounds and bursts

- Determine the role of massive black holes in galaxy evolution
- Make precision tests of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity
- Determine the population of ultra-compact binaries in the Galaxy
- Probe the physics of the early universe

## until now!

- How did the Universe begin?
- Does time have beginning & an end?
- The questions are as old as human curiosity.
- The answers have always seemed beyond the reach of science. . .
*until now!*

- The 21st Century Beyond Einstein