Scientists have spotted a rare and cosmic event happening 3.5 billion light years from Earth: the impending collision of a pair of black holes, each spiraling in slowly around the other.

Astronomers at Caltech identified a cosmic event, confirmed by researchers Columbia University, and while no one is certain how things will play out, it is estimated that the collision will release destructive gravitational waves through space-time with power equivalent to 1,000,000 supernovas.

Black holes are extremely dense objects whose gravitational pulls are so great that not even light can escape. Most galaxies seem to have a supermassive black hole, which can be problematic when galaxies merge. Two supermassive black holes usually enter into orbit with each other, until they interact with other celestial objects, like interstellar gas. As more research is done on this real unfolding example, there is a vast range of potential new knowledge to be gained from such an unusual cosmic collision.

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Inspired by the impossible illustrations of M.C. Escher, particularly the famous Waterfall, inventor and entrepreneur James Dyson created this remarkable fountain that appears to defy the laws of nature.

To the observer, it looks like the water is making its way up each triangular segment, then spilling off into the corners below, and the illusion is hard to shake even once you know how it works.

Essentially, water is being pushed out of the top thanks to pumps below, then flowing back down both off the edges and along the backs of the triangles. Because the eye sees the waterfall at the end, and due to bubbles observed within the tanks, the brain infers the flow of the triangle-top liquid to be in the same direction.

Called the Wrong Garden, Dyson created this masterpiece for the a flower show hosted by the Royal Horticultural Society. Set flush with the ground, one would never guess at a glance that a hidden mechanism is driving the entire trick from below the surface of the landscape.

The post Reverse Physics: Anti-Gravity Fountain Seems to Flow Uphill first appeared on Gajitz.

In areas of the world where there is no grid to deliver electricity, homes are often lit by kerosene lamps. The smoke from those lamps is incredibly dangerous, as are the flames themselves: millions of people every year suffer severe burns and property loss as a result of kerosene lamps tipping over. A startup company has come up with an absolutely brilliant solution for lighting off-grid homes, using one of the most overlooked but abundant resources available absolutely everywhere on Earth: gravity.

GravityLight addresses the fact that more than 1.5 billion people on the planet have no access to reliable electricity. The clean, green LED lamp only requires users to lift a 20-pound weight every 30 minutes. As the weight descends the attached tracks, it powers an internal dynamo which in turn lights the light. It’s the same concept we’ve seen used with hand-cranked gadgets for years, just with less overall effort required of the user thanks to gravity’s help.

The team behind GravityLight looked to IndieGoGo for initial funding of the research stage of their project. They blew way past their initial funding goal, meaning that they will soon be able to provide lights to people in Africa and India for real-world testing. After the lights make it to large-scale manufacturing, they will cost less than $5 each, meaning that people who switch to a GravityLight from a kerosene lamp will recoup their investment in a matter of weeks. The health and safety benefits of switching away from kerosene are incalculable.

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People do a lot of strange and dangerous things for fun and thrills, but biking downhill at 60+ miles per hour takes some serious guts. This gravity bike designed and built by Jeff Tiedeken was designed to handle crazy speeds and make you feel like you’re flying down hills.

The bike is noticeably missing some typical elements: pedals and a chain. That’s because it is meant strictly for downhill racing. You start at the top of a hill, hunker down and let gravity take you all the way to the bottom.

To the bike creator’s credit, he did put brakes on it so riders don’t have to drag their feet to stop. It would take a whole lot of guts – and ideally a whole lot of protective gear – to hop onto this sleek lightweight bike and hurl yourself down a hill at breakneck speed.

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The mysteries of our universe are vast, and even with all of our scientific and technological knowledge we still have to unravel the riddles of our existence. A theory from an Indiana University professor is putting an even-more-mysterious spin on the origins of our universe. Nikodem Poplawski of IU-Bloomington proposes that we’re actually living inside a black hole located in another universe – and that every black hole is potentially a bridge to another universe. His theory uses a modified version of Eintein’s theory of general relativity that takes into account the effect of particle spin.

Putting particle spin into the equation also lets the theorist put the calculation of torsion into the mix. Poplawski says that when the density of matter gets to a certain point, torsion counters gravity and stops matter from compressing indefinitely. Instead, the matter rebounds like a spring and starts expanding again, which could explain why our universe is expanding today.

It might be possible to figure out whether we’re all living inside another universe’s black hole. According to Poplawski, the spin of a black hole would impart some spin to the space-time inside it, which would violate the Lorentz symmetry, a law of symmetry that links space and time. Although it might seem like common sense to just go take a peek into other black holes to see if there are other universes in there, that type of observation is impossible. As you approach a black hole, the huge gravitational pull makes time move slower and slower, so an observer would have to wait an infinite amount of time before being able to see a universe inside.

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