Michael Turner, National Science Foundation

Beyond Einstein: Profound Mysteries and New Challenges

Einstein changed the way we think about the physical world: Space is flexible; time is warped and God plays dice. His theories have dominated science for a century and predicted bizarre new phenomena - black holes, the big bang and expanding universe, gravitational waves, quantum weirdness, and repulsive gravity. Now that essentially all aspects of his theories have been confirmed, we are ready to move beyond Einstein and answer new a set of even more profound questions that his theories let us formulate, but can only be answered by going beyond his theories. Among those questions are: What are space and time and where did they come from? What are dark matter and dark energy? What happened before the Big Bang? What's at the center of a black hole? What is the destiny of the Universe? How are gravity and quantum mechanics to be reconciled?