Albert Einstein died in 1955.
| Albert Einstein died in 1955. |
Albert Einstein had many brilliant ideas, but there was one brainchild that he didn't much like. It was his own notion that there's a force in the universe that is the opposite of gravity. Instead of pulling objects in space toward one another (the way the sun's gravity holds the planets in orbit), the force repels them from each other.
The great physicist later changed his mind about antigravity, calling it "my greatest blunder." Now it seems that he may have been right after all.
|  The arrow points to the ancient's star home galaxy, captured by the Hubble telescope. This dying star exploded 10 billion years ago. |
The evidence comes from new observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronomers studying Hubble pictures of a very distant, ancient exploding star have concluded that the universe is expanding more quickly than they thought. In fact, the expansion is speeding up all the time! One of the best explanations for this is Einstein's old antigravity concept.
Much more research is needed to confirm Einstein's least favorite idea. If it's right, the universe will keep expanding endlessly outward. Billions of years from now, other galaxies may be too far away for Earthlings to see!