Beyond Einstein: scientific goals and missions

Abstract

A century ago, Albert Einstein began creating his theory of relativity, the ideas we use to understand space, time, and gravity, and he took some of the first steps towards the theory of quantum mechanics, the ideas we use to understand matter and energy. Time magazine named Einstein the “Person of the Century” because his ideas transformed civilization. But his work is not finished: spacetime is not yet reconciled with the quantum. Einstein’s general theory of relativity opened possibilities for the formation and structure of the Universe that seemed unbelievable even to Einstein himself but which have all been subsequently confirmed: that the whole Universe began in a hot, dense Big Bang from which all of space expanded; that dense matter could tie spacetime into tangled knots called black holes; and that “empty” space might contain energy with repulsive gravity. Despite these discoveries, we still do not understand conditions at the beginning of the Universe, how space and time behave at the edge of a black hole, or why distant galaxies are accelerating away from us. These phenomena represent the most extreme interactions of matter and energy with space and time. They are the places to look for clues to the next fundamental revolution in understanding – Beyond Einstein.