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.
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As wind power grows around the world, so does the threat the turbines pose to wildlife. From simple fixes to high-tech solutions, new approaches can help.
First derived by Emmy Noether, for every symmetry a theory possesses, there’s an associated conserved quantity. Here’s the profound link.
Inflation, dark matter, and string theory are all proposed extensions to the prior consensus picture. But what does the evidence say?
The Universe has been creating stars for nearly all 13.8 billion years of its history. But those photons can’t match the Big Bang’s light.
Energy balance is the greatest arbiter of weight gain. Embrace the “oinker diet.”
McDermitt Caldera, the site of an ancient volcanic eruption, straddles the border of Oregon and Nevada.
In general relativity, matter and energy curve spacetime, which we experience as gravity. Why can’t there be an “antigravity” force?
Capacitors, acid batteries, and other methods of storing electric charges all lose energy over time. These gravity-fed batteries won’t.
From the tiniest subatomic scales to the grandest cosmic structures of all, everything that exists depends on two things: charge and mass.
The Universe is expanding, and individual, bound structures are all receding away from one another. How, then, are galaxies still colliding?
Dark matter doesn’t absorb or emit light, but it gravitates. Instead of something exotic and novel, could it just be dark, normal matter?
Almost everyone asserts that the Big Bang was the beginning of everything, followed by inflation. Has everyone gotten the order wrong?
The evolution of quantum technology is far from over.
It’s not about particle-antiparticle pairs falling into or escaping from a black hole. A deeper explanation alters our view of reality.
Within our observable Universe, there’s only one Earth and one “you.” But in a vast multiverse, so much more becomes possible.
The last naked-eye Milky Way supernova happened way back in 1604. With today’s detectors, the next one could solve the dark matter mystery.
Most fundamental constants could be a little larger or smaller, and our Universe would still be similar. But not the mass of the electron.
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.
In the 20th century, many options abounded as to our cosmic origins. Today, only the Big Bang survives, thanks to this critical evidence.
The observation that everything we know is made out of matter and not antimatter is one of nature’s greatest puzzles. Will we ever solve it?
The lithium-ion alternatives could help create a safer, greener future.
Our thermodynamic arrow of time explains why the entropy of any isolated system always increases. But it can’t explain what we perceive.
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.
It would get rid of our hazardous, radioactive, and pollutive waste for good, but physics tells us it’s a losing strategy for elimination.
A wave of innovation is coursing through the nuclear industry — but ingrained opposition is the biggest roadblock.
Bang bang all over the Universe.
The mass that gravitates and the mass that resists motion are, somehow, the same mass. But even Einstein didn’t know why this is so.
Scientific surprises, driven by experiment, are often how science advances. But more often than not, they’re just bad science.
Behind America’s hunt for a superior semiconductor.