ESA's Long-Term Plan To Investigate the Invisible Universe 26
xiox writes "The European Space Agency (ESA) have decided that its next two large astronomy missions (costing 2bn Euros) will be to study two aspects of the "invisible universe". The first will be a very large X-ray telescope to be launched in 2028. It will study the physics of the hottest and largest structures in the universe, investigating how they formed and evolved. It will also investigate how black holes grow and affect the universe. The second mission, launched in 2034, will be an observatory capable to measure gravitation waves, the stretches and compressions in space-time caused by massive moving systems, such as merging pairs of black holes. Although the final designs are not yet chosen, the two proposed observatories Athena and eLISA are likely choices. BBC News has more information."
Re:Gravitational waves (Score:5, Interesting)
Gravitational waves are still theoretical, but an experiment that solidly and unambiguously fails to find them in regions where general relativity predicts they've got to be would itself be a huge discovery (current experiments are still on the margins of "maybe we won't see anything here anyway."). Gravitational waves are "only theoretical," but part of the same theoretical framework that has powerfully predicted a bunch of other stuff with incredible accuracy. Ruling out gravitational waves would require a major overhaul of how we understand gravity works, discarding big chunks of general relativity. I think not finding gravity waves would be a really exciting result for physics, since it would be the first time in a while now that a deeply-entrenched fundamental theory would be overturned.