From the Big Bang to dark energy, knowledge of the cosmos has sped up in the past century — but big questions linger.
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The problem of the electroweak horizon haunts the standard model of cosmology and beckons us to ask how deep a rethink the model may need.
The visible Universe extends 46.1 billion light-years from us, while we’ve probed scales down to as small as ~10^-19 meters.
The big-picture physics is simple – let gravity do its job.
The concept of the warp drive is currently at odds with everything we know to be true about physics.
The emergence of life in the universe is as certain as the emergence of matter, gravity, and the stars. Life is the universe developing a memory, and our chemical detection system could find it.
It’s not about particle-antiparticle pairs falling into or escaping from a black hole. A deeper explanation alters our view of reality.
Adams was infamously scooped when Neptune was discovered in 1846. His failure wasn’t the end, but a prelude to a world-changing discovery.
The great hope is that beyond the indirect, astrophysical evidence we have today, we’ll someday detect it directly. But what if we can’t?
For nearly 25 years, we thought we knew how the Universe would end. Now, new measurements point to a profoundly different conclusion.
Einstein’s theory of general relativity introduced the concept of space having a shape. So, what is the shape of space?
For well over a century, engineers have proposed harnessing the ocean’s tides for energy. But the idea hasn’t seemed to register in many places.
Unless you confront your theory with what’s actually out there in the Universe, you’re playing in the sandbox, not engaging in science.
Not even Einstein immediately knew the power of the equations he gave us.
Physicists have yet to pinpoint the hypothetical matter that keeps galaxies from flying apart. Now they have a new focus.
The most celebrated genius in human history didn’t just revolutionize physics, but taught many valuable lessons about living a better life.
The idea of “absolute time” was our default for millennia. But time is relative, as gravity and motion both cause time to dilate.
There are 40 billion billion black holes in the universe. Here’s how our Solar System stacks up against ten of them.
From how life emerged on Earth to why we dream, these unanswered questions continue to perplex scientists.
Quantum mechanics has taught us that even empty space contains energy. “Negative energy” is the state of having less energy than empty space.
More than any other equation in physics, E = mc² is recognizable and profound. But what do we actually learn about reality from it?
Was it the enormous magnitude of the quake, or is the problem with the buildings?
In Einstein’s relativity and the Standard Model, we only have three spatial dimensions. But there could be more, and many think there are.
Some of them have survived the wilds of space for billions of years.
Holograms preserve all of an object’s 3D information, but on a 2D surface. Could the holographic Universe idea lead us to higher dimensions?
In general relativity, white holes are just as mathematically plausible as black holes. Black holes are real; what about white holes?
No matter how beautiful, elegant, or compelling your idea is, if it disagrees with observation and experiment, it’s wrong.
From before the Big Bang to Voyager 1, particle physicist Harry Cliff takes us on a whiz-bang tour of the Universe’s evolution.