Search Results

Early on, only matter and radiation were important for the expanding Universe. After a few billion years, dark energy changed everything.

Retrofitting America’s aging dams for hydropower — while removing ecologically harmful ones — may be a productive path forward.

For nearly 25 years, we thought we knew how the Universe would end. Now, new measurements point to a profoundly different conclusion.

One of the fundamental constants of nature, the fine-structure constant, determines so much about our Universe. Here’s why it matters.

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?

When we divide matter into its fundamental, indivisible components, are those particles truly point-like, or is there a finite minimum size?

These theoretical megastructures represent one way an advanced civilization might harvest energy from stars.

In all the Universe, only a few particles are eternally stable. The photon, the quantum of light, has an infinite lifetime. Or does it?

A new measurement offers insights on the density of the mysterious force driving the Universe’s expansion.

Gravitational waves carry enormous amounts of energy, but spread out quickly once they leave the source. Could they ever create black holes?

Almost 100 years ago, an asymmetric pathology led Dirac to postulate the positron. A similar pathology could lead us to supersymmetry.

The material is both stronger and lighter than those used to make conventional power plant turbines.

As the Sun ages, it loses mass, causing Earth to spiral outward in its orbit. Will that cool the Earth down, or will other effects win out?

The evidence that the Universe is expanding is overwhelming. But how? By stretching the existing space, or by creating new space itself?

Today, the deepest depths of intergalactic space aren’t at absolute zero, but at a chill 2.73 K. How does that temperature change over time?

And can we run the grid of the future without AI?

From forming bound states to normal scattering, many possibilities abound for matter-antimatter interactions. So why do they annihilate?

When cosmic inflation came to an end, the hot Big Bang ensued as a result. If our cosmic vacuum state decays, could it all happen again?

CERN’s NA64 experiment used a high-energy muon beam technique to advance the elusive search for dark matter, offering new hope for solving one of astronomy’s greatest mysteries.

Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.

Without wormholes, warp drive, or some type of new matter, energy, or physics, everyone is limited by the speed of light. Or are they?

Einstein’s most famous equation is E = mc², which describes the rest mass energy inherent to particles. But motion matters for energy, too.

If you bring too much mass or energy together in one location, you’ll inevitably create a black hole. So why didn’t the Big Bang become one?

We need more data centers for AI. Developers are getting creative about where to build them.

Scientists have been chasing the dream of harnessing the reactions that power the Sun since the dawn of the atomic era. Interest, and investment, in the carbon-free energy source is heating up.

Cosmic inflation, proposed back in 1980, is a theory that precedes and sets up the hot Big Bang. After thorough testing, is it still valid?

In the year 2000, physicists created a list of the ten most important unsolved problems in their field. 25 years later, here’s where we are.

A $30,000 electric vehicle with 400 miles of range that charges in under 10 minutes remains a pipe dream over the near future.

For every proton, there were over a billion others that annihilated away with an antimatter counterpart. So where did all that energy go?

The highest-energy particles could be a sign of new, unexpected physics. But the simplest, most mundane explanation is particularly iron-ic.