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For many years, cosmologists have claimed the Universe is 13.8 billion years old. A new paper says no, it’s 26.7 billion. How do we decide?

Here in our Universe, time passes at a fixed rate for all observers: one second-per-second. Before the Big Bang, things were very different.

Despite the Sun’s high core temperatures, atomic nuclei repel each other too strongly to fuse together. Good thing for quantum physics!

Our thermodynamic arrow of time explains why the entropy of any isolated system always increases. But it can’t explain what we perceive.

Perhaps the most remarkable fact about the Universe is simply that it, and everything in it, exists. But what’s the reason why?

Many, from neuroscientists to philosophers to anesthesiologists, have claimed to understand consciousness. Do physicists? Does anyone?

These practical strategies can help you conquer burnout and achieve a state of calm and focused productivity.

Dark energy is one of the biggest mysteries in all the Universe. Is there any way to avoid “having to live with it?”

We need a hypothesis that accounts for both the fine-tuning of physics for life but also the arbitrariness and gratuitous suffering we find in the world.

The laws of physics obey certain symmetries and defy others. It’s theoretically tempting to add new ones, but reality doesn’t agree.

Under extreme conditions, matter takes on properties that lead to remarkable, novel possibilities. Topological superconductors included.

The expanding Universe, in many ways, is the ultimate out-of-equilibrium system. After enough time passes, will we eventually get there?

A paradigm should be elastic enough to accommodate new data and broad enough to explain the world. For Rupert Sheldake, ours does neither.

In all directions, at great distances, the Universe looks younger, more uniform, and less evolved. Does that mean Earth must be the center?

The “first cause” problem may forever remain unsolved, as it doesn’t fit with the way we do science.

A recent experiment challenges the leading dark matter theory and hints at new directions for uncovering one of the Universe’s biggest mysteries.

Millennia ago, philosophers like Anaximander grasped that nature is the ultimate recycler.

When Einstein gave General Relativity to the world, he included an extraneous cosmological constant. How did his ‘biggest blunder’ occur?

The Universe isn’t just expansion, but the expansion itself is accelerating. So why can’t we feel it in any measurable way?

Analog could serve as “always-on” computing, while digital is turned on only when necessary.

In logic, ‘reductio ad absurdum’ shows how flawed arguments fall apart. Our absurd Universe, however, often defies our intuitive reasoning.

Often viewed as a purely theoretical, calculational tool only, direct observation of the Lamb Shift proved their very real existence.

IceCube scientists have detected high-energy tau neutrinos from deep space, suggesting that neutrino transformations occur not only in lab experiments but also over cosmic distances.

Not even Einstein immediately knew the power of the equations he gave us.

A perfect map is as useless as it is impossible to create.

Michael Faraday’s 1834 law of induction was the key experiment behind the eventual discovery of relativity. Einstein admitted it himself.

Over a century after we first unlocked the secrets of the quantum universe, people find it more puzzling than ever. Can we make sense of it?

Figuring out the answer involved a prism, a pail of water, and a 50 year effort by the most famous father-son astronomer duo ever.

Time is relative, not absolute, as gravity and motion both cause time to dilate. Your head and feet, therefore, don’t age at the same rate.

Scientific surprises, driven by experiment, are often how science advances. But more often than not, they’re just bad science.