Pushing our understanding of spacetime to the absolute limit
I'm Alex Lupsasca, a theoretical physicist at Vanderbilt University and Project Scientist for the Black Hole Explorer (BHEX): a space mission to build a telescope bigger than the Earth and take the sharpest images in the history of astronomy.
Why are we doing this? To strengthen—and perhaps revolutionize—our understanding of the laws of physics in domains of reality previously completely beyond our reach. BHEX will conduct the most exquisitely precise test of Einstein's theory of general relativity, a cornerstone of our standard model of physics upon which our best understanding of spacetime currently rests and upon which key technologies including GPS depend. Does our current understanding of the universe work in the most extreme gravity ever observed by science, at the furthest reaches of the observable universe? A perfect confirmation would be stunning, directly showing us some of the weirdest predictions of gravitational theory playing out in reality. By contrast, any deviations would yield our first glimpse into the next, deeper layer of fundamental theory, and possibly open the door to an entirely new realm of technologies…