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 […]
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The idea of ‘absolute time’ is an illusion. Physics and subjective experience reveal why.
How quickly is it expanding today, and how does that expansion rate change over time? What is the Universe made of? How quickly is it expanding today, and how does that […]
Even though it was the crowning achievement of Einstein’s career, he was only a small part of the full story. If you were a physicist in the early 20th century, there […]
Think there are habitable super-Earths out there? Think again. Here in our Solar System, we have two very distinct types of planets: small, terrestrial, rocky worlds, with thin (or no) atmospheres […]
If everything eventually dies and decays, is there a way to prolong the inevitable? Our Universe, as it exists today, puts us in an incredibly privileged position. Had we come […]
Astronomers have recently discovered the most massive neutron star to date, nearly at the theoretical limit for such stars. But it’s only about the size of a small city.
2019 offers an outstanding selection of books, accessories, and much more for the science-lover in your life! With each passing year, a whole slew of new scientific discoveries, refinements, and improvements […]
Of all the injustices in Nobel Prize history, her 1957 Nobel snub is the most egregious. One of the biggest scientific revolutions of the 20th century was the discovery of […]
Scientific surprises are often how science advances. But more often than not, they’re just bad science. When you’re a scientist, getting an unexpected result can be a double-edged sword. The best […]
General Relativity has nothing to do with light or electromagnetism at all. So how to gravitational waves know to travel at the speed of light? There are two fundamental classes of […]
We just found the first one within 1,000 light-years of us. But there’s probably one much, much closer. For a long time, black holes were known to exist only in the […]
USGS’s ‘Unified Geologic Map of the Moon’ is the definitive blueprint of the lunar surface.
In 2020, we experienced the shortest ‘day’ in 50 years. Here’s the reason why. On the timescales that humans experience, there are lots of things that we consider to be extremely […]
With three colors and three anticolors, there aren’t actually nine gluons; only eight. One of the most puzzling features of the Universe is the strong nuclear force. Inside every proton or […]
The act of observing doesn’t just determine a previously indeterminate state, but can destroy information, too. Imagine that you’re a scientist attempting to understand reality at a fundamental level. How […]
A black hole’s event horizon is thought of as the point of no return. But perhaps there are ways back out, after all. Black holes just might be the most extreme […]
It’s that the Universe can be understood at all. Don’t deafen yourself to its lessons. In a nutshell, 2020 has been a unique year in human history. For the first time […]
The quest for a quantum theory of gravity is the holy grail of physics. Here’s why it’s murkier than anyone expected. If you want to fully describe how the Universe […]
There are three factors all competing to determine the fate of the Earth, and the one that’s winning now won’t win in the end. If you could measure the average distance […]
The images themselves will take your breath away, but the science we can extract from them is truly revolutionary and spectacular. Dark matter may be one of the most mysterious […]
Our ultimate fate depends on something we’ve barely begun to measure. One of the biggest mysteries in all of physics is dark energy. According to our best observations, the Universe cannot […]
We have two ways of measuring the expansion rate. Here’s the harder one. If you want to understand where our Universe came from and where it’s going, you need to measure […]
It’s one way to interpret recent X-ray data, but it conflicts with much, much better data we already have. Earlier this month, a new study came out claiming something shocking: perhaps […]
A gift guide of the hottest educational toys for your budding scientist, engineer, or mathematician.
And what might we learn as we collect new, never-before-seen data? If you took one of history’s top scientists from 100 years ago and dropped them into today’s world, what […]
With just a few more neutron star mergers, we’ll have the best constraints of all-time. How fast is the Universe expanding? Ever since the expanding Universe was first discovered nearly […]
A new batch of papers reveals some of Mars’ subterranean secrets.
If the multiverse is real, where does all the energy for it come from? One of the biggest scientific puzzles, even given our knowledge of the Big Bang, is to understand […]
If quantum gravity is right, these gravitational ripples must be more than waves; they must be particles, too. Back in February of 2016, LIGO made an announcement that changed our […]