Episode 60 of Stories from Space — The Dark Universe — is now Live!
<p>This week was a bit of a treat for me personally since I got to delve into something really astrophysical and theoretical! To break it down, in 1916, Einstein placed the finishing touches on his Theory of General Relativity (GR), which explained how gravity alters the curvature of spacetime, matter and energy are equivalent, and time and space are one. His theory was confirmed almost immediately, but by the 1950s and 60s, astronomers finally had the telescopes they needed to really test GR!</p>
<p>Ah, but there was a snag! When observing massive galaxies, astronomers noticed that their rotational curves suggested there was a lot more mass out there than what they could see. This led to the speculation that the Universe was filled with a mysterious invisible mass (“Dark Matter”) that interacted with “normal matter” only through gravity. The existence of this mass was needed for GR to be correct, which had been confirmed nine ways from Sunday by this point.</p>
<p><a href="https://storybywill.medium.com/episode-60-of-stories-from-space-the-dark-universe-is-now-live-664f6f9f8c13"><strong>Learn More</strong></a></p>