A new paper by Fridolin Weber, Peter O. Hess, and Cesar A. Zen Vasconcellos explores a different way of thinking about gravity under extreme conditions.
Einstein’s theory of general relativity works remarkably well, but it predicts singularities in places such as the centers of black holes, where the mathematical description of spacetime breaks down. The new study looks at an extended version of general relativity in which the structure of spacetime itself is modified.
The authors show that this approach can keep spacetime from becoming infinitely curved, avoiding the usual black-hole singularity. The same framework may also help explain why the universe’s expansion is speeding up, suggesting that what we call dark energy could arise from the geometry of spacetime itself.