If everything eventually dies and decays, is there a way to prolong the inevitable? Our Universe, as it exists today, puts us in an incredibly privileged position. Had we come […]
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75 years after Erwin Schrödinger’s prescient description of something like DNA, we still don’t know the “laws of life.”
How we handle grief largely depends on our worldview. Here is how three famous philosophers handled the certainty of grief and despair.
The whole isn’t greater than the sum of its parts; that’s a flaw in our thinking. Non-reductionism requires magic, not merely science.
A wild, compelling idea without a direct, practical test, the Multiverse is highly controversial. But its supporting pillars sure are stable.
Which is good, because if they do, they violate the cosmological principle. In theory, the Universe should be the same, on average, everywhere. A simulation of the large-scale structure of […]
In all the Universe, only a few particles are eternally stable. The photon, the quantum of light, has an infinite lifetime. Or does it?
Is the multiverse real? It’s one of the hottest questions in all of theoretical physics. We invited two astrophysicists to join the debate.
To answer any physical question, you must ask the Universe itself. But what happens when the answers aren’t around anymore?
Whatever’s lurking out there, it isn’t all, or even mostly, normal matter. When it comes to the Universe, it’s only natural to wonder what, exactly, it is that makes everything up. […]
An exclusive interview with physicist Lee Smolin reveals how abandoning Einstein’s dream may have been a terrible mistake.
It happened more than once, and needed to. Here’s why. If there’s one thing you can be certain about when it comes to outer space, it’s that it’s transparent, not opaque, […]
Society-changing ideas form through a three-stage process, argues author Michael Bhaskar.
The inside of every black hole leads to the birth of a new Universe. Could our Universe have arisen from one?
In principle, the laws of physics are the same forwards and backwards. But in practice, time only runs in one direction. Most of the laws of physics are the same […]
The Universe is supposed to be the same everywhere and in all directions. So what’s that giant “cold spot” doing out there?
It’s true that we have a thermodynamic arrow of time, and entropy always increases. But that can’t explain what we perceive. One of the enormous conceptual ideas that came along […]
If you want to get the Universe we see, a multiverse comes along for the ride. When we look out at the Universe today, it simultaneously tells us two stories about […]
Is the time crystal really an otherworldly revolution, leveraging quantum computing that will change physics forever?
It’s much more complex a question than dividing its mass by the volume of the event horizon. If you want to get a meaningful answer, you have to go deep. If […]
Your television may soon get a serious upgrade.
The idea of ‘absolute time’ is an illusion. Physics and subjective experience reveal why.
It’s a wild idea, but there’s a way to test it. No matter how far we look out in the Universe, there’s always more “Universe” to see. Even at the extreme […]
And do our black holes give birth to baby Universes? When it comes to our understanding of the Universe, the 20th century was full of surprises. A little over 100 […]
The origin story for our Universe got a major revision nearly 40 years ago. Time to catch up. 13.8 billion years ago, all the matter and energy contained within our Universe […]
Why does time flow in one direction? Why do humans perceive time so differently than it really is? Is there really a difference between the present, the past, and the future? These books explore these questions and more.
Few scientific ideas have been as polarizing as string theory. There are good reasons to both love it and hate it. String theory is perhaps the most controversial big idea in […]
Demanding appropriate levels of skepticism and scrutiny isn’t cruelty, but rather demonstrates scientific integrity and intellectual honesty. Every few months, a novel headline will fly across the world, claiming to […]
The Big Bang started it all. And then we realized there was more. Of all the questions humanity has ever pondered, perhaps the most profound is, “where did all of this […]
The biggest error from ‘A Brief History of Time’ continues to misinform generations of aspiring physicists. The greatest idea of Stephen Hawking’s scientific career truly revolutionized how we think about […]