Space as a Muse for New Physics

It's great these days that by following the right Blogs (of Professors or Post-Docs in whatever your field of interest) you can cut out the middle man (Science Journalist's) and get news in a much more timely manner, without the jumbled interpretation of said middle man.  I would point out that there are exceptions, Quanta zine's Natalie Wolchover has (I believe) a Grad degree in Physics and is great at explaining new interesting results in an entertaining and accurate manner.

One of many Blogs I follow is a Post-Doc currently at Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, he's a Theoretical Physicist...goes by the Handle 4Gravitons, physics jargon (Feynman Diagram -- I believe is the reference there).  He's written a great post outlining the many deep and difficult areas of Fundamental physics illuminated by Astronomers/Astrophysicist's in their study of Space.

https://4gravitons.wordpress.com/2017/03/03/what-space-can-tell-us-about-fundamental-physics/

His usual audience are people who at least have studied Physics in Undergrad or more likely Grad school.  But this one he tried to make as accessable as possible, provides some great links too.  I was already familiar with most of what he wrote about, I think #4 is especially cool, I have tried to read Nima & Maldacena's paper (2 Super Geniuses -- in the 180-200 IQ range) and I couldn't follow well at all, even a summary written and simplified by Lubos Motl (word is that Sheldon from BBT is loosely based on LuMo) was difficult to comprehend...other than it being obvious what a genius idea this is!

The one item that was new to me was this amazing idea that seems to have been put in motion and is nearly complete...the Event Horizon Telescope!  Check the link but it's basically a Very Large Array of smaller telescopes that has an effective diameter of Earth!  With this powerful VLA they believe they can view a Black Holes Event Horizon!  Now you may wonder how can you see an Event Horizon (the point at which even light cannot escape the immense gravitational pull of a Black Hole) but there are many ways it could be seen, if a Black Hole is syphoning gas from say a nearby Star then there will be an accretion disk that gets very hot as it enters the Event Horizon.

Another way is a currently a huge theoretical debate, something called the Firewall Paradox, this is a fascinating area of Theoretical Physics as it points out an important way that we likely don't understand Quantum Gravity.  Which of course is a nascent theory far from complete, and that's probably the best case description referring to M-Theory.  The original authors that discovered this paradox believe that space-time ends at the Event Horizon, in a Firewall that annihilates all matter/particles that enter that region!  I don't personally believe this is the correct interpretation, I lean more towards an amazingly creative genius hypothesis put forth by Maldacena & Susskind, it's called ER=EPR.  Try and read about it, it's mind blowing...basically the fabric of space is due to quantum entanglement (that idea is not entirely theirs, check the link) and all entangled particles are joined via microscopic wormholes!  Far out!!

PS

LuMo in one particular post on the Firewall problem, had a couple of guys who thought they were much smarter than they actually are and posted some arrogant comments, LuMo's blog is definitely the wrong place to do this...check out LuMo eviscerate these guys, it's very inside Physics so maybe not accessable to all but I was def LMFAO!! :-)