I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge this amazing breakthrough discovery which occurred this past week. The concept of warped space-time, predicted by Albert Einstein 100 years ago has crossed over from the theoretical to a real proven phenomenon! I guess Star Trek was real as well in that case! If you have not read about this, a pair of colliding black holes were observed to emit gravitational waves when a portion of their combined mass was converted to energy according to Einstein’s formula E=mc(squared). The waves passing through Earth caused a warping of spacetime such that observed distances between fixed objects appeared to change by an infinitesimal amount in accordance with the laws of General Relativity. Even more remarkable is the technology that has been developed to detect changes in distances a fraction of the diameter of a proton!
I encourage readers to explore this breakthrough discovery further!:
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=137628
http://aasnova.org/2016/02/11/ligo-discovers-the-merger-of-two-black-holes/