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Nuclear fusion has long been seen as the future of energy. As the NIF now passes the breakeven point, how close are we to our ultimate goal?

In the early stages of the hot Big Bang, matter and antimatter were (almost) balanced. After a brief while, matter won out. Here’s how.

Since the dawn of history, humans have pondered our ultimate cosmic origins. Now in the 21st century, science has gone beyond the Big Bang.

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

Back during the hot Big Bang, it wasn’t just charged particles and photons that were created, but also neutrinos. Where are they now?

Measurements of the acceleration of the universe don’t agree, stumping physicists working to understand the cosmic past and future. A new proposal seeks to better align these estimates — and is likely testable.

We have very specific predictions for how particles ought to decay. When we look at B-mesons all together, something vital doesn’t add up.

The first elements in the Universe formed just minutes after the Big Bang, but it took hundreds of thousands of years before atoms formed.

Cosmic inflation is the state that preceded and set up the hot Big Bang. Here’s what the Universe was like during that time period.

From ancient Greek cosmology to today’s mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, explore the relentless quest to understand the Universe’s invisible forces.

If the Universe is expanding, and the expansion is accelerating, what does that tell us about the cause of the expanding Universe?

There was a lot of hype and a lot of nonsense, but also some profoundly major advances. Here are the biggest ones you may have missed.

Although the Big Bang occurred at an instant in time long ago, we still see the light from it. Will the evidence ever disappear completely?

The zero-point energy of empty space is not zero. Even with all the physics we know, we have no idea how to calculate what it ought to be.

How (not) to end up in the ash heap of history.

The National Ignition Facility just repeated, and improved upon, their earlier demonstration of nuclear fusion. Now, the true race begins.

Since the mid-1960s, the CMB has been identified with the Big Bang’s leftover glow. Could any alternative explanations still work?

Researchers at the Brookhaven National Laboratory recently created the heaviest exotic antimatter hypernucleus ever observed.

In our Universe, all stable atomic nuclei have protons in them; there’s no stable “neutronium” at all. But what’s the reason why?

According to neuropsychologist Julia DiGangi, no one can live a life free of emotional pain. We can only choose how those emotions empower us.

The Multiverse fuels some of the 21st century’s best fiction stories. But its supporting pillars are on extremely stable scientific footing.

Just 13.8 billion years after the hot Big Bang, we can see objects up to 46.1 billion light-years away. No, this doesn’t violate relativity.

Today, the Large Hadron Collider is the most powerful particle physics experiment in history. What would a new, successor collider teach us?

The miniaturization of particle accelerators could disrupt medical science.

The second law of thermodynamics tells us that entropy always increases. But that doesn’t mean it was zero at the start of the Big Bang.

As Marcel Proust said, “The real voyage of discovery… consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

Some 13.8 billion years ago, the Universe became hot, dense, and filled with high-energy quanta all at once. Here’s what it was like.

From the explosions themselves to their unique and vibrant colors, the fireworks displays we adore require quantum physics.

In the infant Universe, particle physics reigned supreme.

LK-99, almost certainly, isn’t a room-temperature superconductor. The underlying physics of the phenomenon helps us understand why.