The Hidden Reality

total volume of space in which the field’s energy is high increases over time. Recognizing that such field configurations yield yet further inflationary expansion, we see that once inflation begins it never ends.

on a cell phone, a radio, or a wireless computer, and the signals received represent a tiny portion of the thicket of electromagnetic transmissions silently rushing by and through you every second. Most stunning of all, Maxwell’s equations revealed that visible light itself is an electromagnetic wave, one whose rippling patterns our eyes have evolved to se

galaxies recede from one another not because they are traveling through space—galaxies don’t have jet engines—but rather because space itself is swelling and the galaxies are being dragged along by the overall flow.2 And the thing is, relativity places no limit on how fast space can swell, so there is no limit on how fast galaxies that are being pushed apart by the swell recede from one another. The rate of recession between any two galaxies can exceed any speed, including the speed of light.

much as general relativity shows that positive pressure gives rise to attractive gravity, it shows that negative pressure gives rise to the opposite: repulsive gravity.

The bigger the mass, the bigger the object’s gravitational pull. In Einstein’s theory, gravity arises from an object’s mass (and energy) but also from its pressure.

General relativity shows that because of this, the rate at which time passes on each will be slightly different: the ground clock will run a tiny bit slow (billionths of a second per year) compared to the elevated clock. The temporal mismatch is an example of what we mean by time being curved or warped

General relativity then establishes that objects move toward regions where time elapses more slowly; in a sense, all objects “want” to age as slowly as possible. From an Einsteinian perspective, that explains why an object falls when you let go of it.