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During the second string revolution, in 1995, physicists proposed that the five consistent string theories are actually only different faces of a unique theory.

Landlords aren’t the ones getting rich off of renting properties; slumlords are.

The transition across a quantum barrier is known as quantum tunneling, and the amount of time it takes for such a transition to occur had never been measured before. For […]

It’s very different from the colloquial meanings of “true-and-false” or “right-and-wrong.” In many ways, the human endeavor of science is the ultimate pursuit of truth. By asking the natural world […]

Earth wasn’t the only potentially habitable planet in the early Solar System. What happened to Mars? If you could travel back in time to the early stages of the Solar System, […]

In Well Grounded, behavioral neuroscience professor Kelly Lambert says it’s all about contingency planning.

And do they fundamentally describe our entire Universe, or do we require something else? The Universe we perceive and view, all around us, isn’t representative of what actually exists at […]

Every physical theory has constants in it. The gravitational constant is remarkably uncertain. When we first began formulating physical laws, we did so empirically: through experiments. Drop a ball off […]

A single thought experiment reveals a paradox. Could quantum gravity be the solution? Sometimes, if you want to understand how nature truly works, you need to break things down to […]

Freedom and democracy are great, but our understanding of what those things are has changed a lot since we came up with them.

We’ve never seen an image of a black hole’s event horizon before. Here’s what we’re expecting, based on what we already know. For hundreds of years, physicists have hypothesized that the […]

13.8 billion years isn’t close to enough time, but if we wait long enough, even our Sun will become one. The Big Bang happened approximately 13.8 billion years ago, and it […]

Number of proton-neutron pairs determine how fast the particles move, results suggest.

If you look everywhere between the numbers 1 and 2, you’ll never find 3. Let’s say you have an idea about how our physical reality might be different from how we […]

There aren’t any holes in the Universe at all. What actually exists is far more interesting. Somewhere, far away, if you believe what you read, there’s a hole in the […]

Our outer Solar System, from Jupiter to Neptune, isn’t unique after all. In the early 1990s, scientists began detecting the first planets orbiting stars other than the Sun: exoplanets. The easiest […]

There was a first molecule, and we found one just like it. But there’s a big difference. The Universe’s first molecule is found at last! That’s what the headlines have […]

Money may not buy you love, but it won’t break your heart either.

It would be the ultimate method for solving our pollution or hazardous/radioactive waste problems, but we’ll never do it. Here’s why. Imagine our planet as it was for the first 4.55 […]

But we shouldn’t give up on direct detection. Here’s why. Dark matter is not only the most abundant form of matter in the Universe, it’s also the most mysterious. Whereas all […]

There really is a cosmic conundrum about how fast the Universe is expanding. Changing its age won’t help. One of the most surprising and interesting discoveries of the 21st century is […]

Gravity gets weaker as the distance squared. But gravitational waves only get weaker as the distance. Why? One of the things we often just accept about the world is that […]

What does the power of the online mob hold for tyranny and conformity?

Thoughtful advice on how to manage a volatile market.

If you think you have problems today, be glad you’re not moving at the speed of light. Special relativity, even though it’s over 100 years old, is still one of the […]

For billions of years, dark energy couldn’t have been detected. Now, it’s everywhere we look. When we look out at the ultra-distant Universe, billion of light-years away, we’re seeing it as […]

American geneticists take a stand against the misuse of their science by racists.

The Tesla CEO said the Hardware 3 upgrade has “1000 percent more capability” than the current hardware.

Our biases, preferences, and ideas of simplicity and elegance can get in the way. Here’s a scientific way to cut through them all. What are the rules governing reality? If you […]

Our planet is rare, precious, and fragile. It’s up to all of us to be its steward. With the advent of rocketry and spaceflight, our cosmic perspective changed forever. The very […]