Subscribe to New Scientist magazine
ARTICLE PREVIEW
This article is only available to subscribers of New Scientist magazine. Subscribe now for full-text access to all content on this site.

Is space-time actually a superfluid?

  • 09 June 2006
  • Marcus Chown
  • Magazine issue 2555

LOOK up at the sky. Almost everything out there is spinning around: stars, galaxies, planets, moons - they are all rotating. Yet physicists believe that the universe itself is not revolving. Why?

It's a question that Pawel Mazur can't answer. Mazur, a physicist at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, is one of a number who think it is entirely possible that our universe is spinning on an axis. If these people are right, it could make understanding the universe a whole lot simpler. You could stop worrying about the big problems in cosmology: the origin of the big bang, the nature of dark energy and maybe dark matter too. You could get rid of the strange idea that the universe went through a superfast period of expansion known as inflation. You might even be able to halt the attempt to find a theory that marries together quantum theory ...

The complete article is 2426 words long.
Password Login
username:
password:
 help
Athens Login
Athens users ONLY
help
TERMS AND CONDITIONS
New Scientist Full Access is available free to magazine subscribers

Subscribe today at only USD $5.95 for your first 4 issues and get New Scientist, the world's leading science & technology news magazine delivered direct to your door every week

As a magazine subscriber you will benefit from instant access to:

  • the full text of this article
  • all Full Access content on newscientist.com
  • 15 years of past issues of New Scientist via the online Archive
Subscribe now