DOES A COSMIC 'GLITCH' IN GRAVITY CHALLENGE ALBERT EINSTEIN'S GREATEST THEORY?

Gravity changes once you reach a cosmic scale

- Robert Lea

In the 109 years since it was first formulated, general relativity has remained our finest description of gravity on a galactic scale. And time and again, experiments have confirmed its accuracy. “This model of gravity has been essential for everything from theorising the Big Bang to photographing black holes,” Robin Wen of the University of Waterloo’s mathematical physics program said. “But when we try to understand gravity on a cosmic scale, at the scale of galaxy clusters and beyond, we encounter apparent inconsistencies with the predictions of general relativity. Gravity becomes around one per cent weaker when dealing with distances in the billions of light years. We are calling this inconsistency a ‘cosmic glitch’. It’s almost as if gravity itself stops perfectly matching Einstein’s theory.”