Celebrating the 110th Anniversary of General Relativity: Advances, Challenges and Perspectives

Dear Colleagues,

The General Theory of Relativity (GTR), enunciated just 110 years ago, remains to this day the best description of gravitation, the feeblest out of the four fundamental interactions and, nonetheless, the one ruling the cosmos at the grandest scales.

Empirical evidence for this theory has recently begun to accumulate. However, fewer tests have been conducted regarding this compared to those supporting electromagnetism and the two nuclear interactions. Indeed, in most situations that are subject to direct experimental investigation, gravitation is far weaker than the other fundamental interactions. In particular, the GTR reaches its full potential only in extreme scenarios characterized by exceptionally intense gravitational fields that rapidly vary over the shortest space and temporal scales, and in speeds close to that of light. Such conditions can be found uniquely in the deepest astronomical recesses.

Its most spectacular confirmations recently came from the detection of gravitational waves emitted during the last stages of the cosmic dance of pairs of black holes and neutron stars that would inevitably lead to their merger, and from the radio waves emitted from matter in the neighbors of the supermassive black holes at the cores of our galaxy and of M87.

On the other hand, the lingering inability of effectively merging GTR with quantum mechanics still represents a key challenge. Strictly connected to this problem is that of the singularities that would likely mark the end of the validity domain of the theory. Additionally, the still unexplained nature of dark matter and dark energy poses challenges to it at galactic and cosmological scales.

This commemorative Special Issue, to which distinguished scholars from all over the world are invited to contribute, is devoted shedding more light on such themes.

Prof. Dr. Lorenzo Iorio
Prof. Dr. Øyvind Grøn
Guest Editors

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