News: News Archives Space Science Topics to Be Covered at the
AAAS Annual Meeting Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave
Observatory (LIGO) Gravity was the first of the four fundamental
forces of nature, the others being electromagnetic force, strong
nuclear force, and weak nuclear force. The strong and weak
nuclear forces operate only at the atomic scale. The remaining
twothe gravitational force and the electromagnetic forcegovern
matter. These four fundamental forces were at work immediately
following the Big Bang and resulted in the creation of atoms and
matter. And yet, nearly 350 years after Newton's insight,
gravity remains a mystery of modern science. In 1915, Einstein
developed his general theory of relativity, explaining that
gravity is not a force between objects, but a force between mass
and spacetime. The presence of mass imposes a curvature on
spacetime, while spacetime imposes constraints on how mass can
behave. The general theory of relativity predicts that
accelerating mass should radiate gra