We’ve already observed three cases where it’s happened. When you look at an object in space, it’s pretty easy to tell if it’s a star or a planet. Stars are […]
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The laws of physics obey certain symmetries and defy others. It’s theoretically tempting to add new ones, but reality doesn’t agree.
Soviet researchers studied crime through a Marxist-Leninist lens. Under Lenin, a humanitarian approach to criminality briefly emerged, but dissipated when Stalin rose to power.
When you don’t have enough clues to bring your detective story to a close, you should expect that your educated guesses will all be wrong.
Your life is far more arbitrary than you might think.
Unless you have a critical mass of heavy elements when your star first forms, planets, including rocky ones, are practically impossible.
And if it does strike us, how much damage will it cause? Will near-Earth asteroid Apophis strike us in 2068? Generically, asteroids under ~1 km in size are irregularly shaped, will […]
How we handle grief largely depends on our worldview. Here is how three famous philosophers handled the certainty of grief and despair.
This map of Hutterite colonies in North America says something about religion and evolution — and more precisely, speciation.
Information may not seem like something physical, yet it has become a central concern for physicists. A wonderful new book explores the importance of the “dataome” for the physical, biological, and human worlds.
When people pick the greatest scientist of all-time, Newton and Einstein always come up. Perhaps they should name Johannes Kepler, instead.
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.
At very high and very low temperatures, matter takes on properties that open up an entire Universe of remarkable new possibilities.
And either way, is energy or information conserved? When two things in the Universe that “always” occur meet one another, how do you know which one will win? Gravitational waves, […]
Only the best physical theories outlast the minds that invented them. Throughout the 20th century, a number of discoveries revolutionized our Universe. The discovery of the interior structure of atoms as […]
The upcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope is the event of a lifetime.
Move over, IC 1101. You may be impressively large, but you never stood a chance against the largest known galaxy: Alcyoneus.
In terms of the planets we’ve discovered, super-Earths are by far the most common. What does that mean for the Universe?
No. No no no. Just… no. The JWST has truly blown our scientific minds, but it’s a pure crackpot idea that the Big Bang is now disproven.
Time travel is possible, but only in one direction.
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Can spacekime help us make headway on some of the most pernicious inconsistencies in physics?
The eastern inner core located beneath Indonesia’s Banda Sea is growing faster than the western side beneath Brazil.
Although most of the Universe’s mass is dark matter, which gravitates just as well as normal matter, it still can’t make black holes.
Filaments, hundreds of millions of light-years long, were just caught spinning. In our own cosmic backyard, everything we see spins, rotates, and revolves in some fashion or other. Our planet […]
Only 17 years after its discovery have we learned we’re safe from asteroid Apophis. Ever since its 2004 discovery, asteroid 99942 Apophis has threatened planet Earth. Asteroid Apophis has been measured […]
Developing an awareness of and an appreciation for science is what we all truly need, not what we’ve been doing.
When you view your right hand in a mirror, it appears as a left hand. Writing is reversed, as is the direction of any spinning object: clockwise becomes counterclockwise and […]
Just say no to artist’s illustrations. This is what the Universe actually looks like. The Universe we observe often surpasses our greatest imaginings. This 20-year time-lapse of stars near the center […]
There’s a big difference between the notions of ‘false vacuum’ and ‘true vacuum’ states. Here’s why we don’t want to live in the former.
If dark matter exists in a large halo in our galaxy, made up of particles, then it’s passing through us constantly. But how much?