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Scientists put the most mysterious force in the Universe to the ultimate test. When it comes to the Universe, it’s easy to make the incorrect assumption that what we see is […]

A fascinating mathematical structure exists that goes well beyond our common experience. Could it revolutionize physics? Perhaps the most remarkable fact about the Universe is that every particle within it — at […]

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 […]

Even the ones hunting for aliens aren’t excited. Here’s the reason why. In this world, there are very few issues more polarizing than the notion of aliens. For as long as […]

And, if we have one, how close are we to it? No matter which direction we look in, or how far away our telescopes and instruments are capable of seeing, the […]

If you can’t surpass it in a vacuum, try doing so in a medium instead. In our Universe, there are a few rules that everything must obey. Energy, momentum, and angular […]

All scientific theories, at some level, are wrong. That’s why consensus is so vital. There are two important and common words that, when used scientifically, have a very different meaning than […]

Just because an idea is fashionable doesn’t mean it’s relevant for our Universe. One of the greatest unsolved puzzles in all of science is dark energy. The Universe isn’t just […]

We give it the flight plan, and it takes care of the rest. It has to. Here’s why. No matter how advanced our technology becomes, there are certain limits that can […]

Superpowerful lasers for next-generation technologies are closer to existence.

Forget Copenhagen, Many-Worlds, Pilot Waves and all the others. What you’re left with is reality. When it comes to understanding the Universe, scientists have traditionally taken two approaches in tandem with […]

To have breakthrough ideas, try veering off your original field of study.

It isn’t just that mass and energy are equivalent and interchangeable. It tells us something fundamental about mass itself. Of all the equations that we use to describe the Universe, perhaps […]

Scientists make an important discovery for the future of computing.

Even 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang, we can reconstruct the first 3 minutes. About 100 years ago, we began to truly understand the nature of the Universe for the […]

There’s a million things we haven’t done. But just you wait. The Universe as we know it began some 13.8 billion years ago with the onset of the hot Big Bang. […]

Sure, cosmic inflation has its detractors. But it also has something no alternative possesses: predictions and tests. Perhaps the most compelling part of any remarkable story is its origin: how it […]

A mind-bending physics theory may explain why we have one reality instead of many.

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 […]

If you want to find life in the Universe, this is how you do it. When it comes to uncovering the ultimate truths about reality, we can only reap what we […]

It doesn’t matter what’s popular, logical, or intuitive. What matters is what you can observe and measure. Imagine asking the biggest, most fundamental question of all: what is reality? How would […]

Though quantum teleportation has been demonstrated, the beam-me-up kind is still fiction.

Here are 10 physics courses you can take now with some of the best experts in the world.

Can neural networks help scientists discover laws about more complex phenomena, like quantum mechanics?

And which ones are probably examples where we’ve fooled ourselves? Every once in a while — multiple times per year — a new research finding fails to line up with our theoretical expectations. In […]

Light cannot escape from a black hole, no matter what. But when two black holes merge? They just might. On September 14, 2015, history was made as the NSF’s twin LIGO […]

CERN’s bold new proposal has physicists confronting the biggest question of all: is building a new collider worth it? If you want to discover anything novel about the natural, physical […]

Astronomers find these five chapters to be a handy way of conceiving the universe’s incredibly long lifespan.

Scalars, vectors, and tensors come up all the time in science. But what are they? One of the major goals of science is to describe our reality as accurately as possible. […]

Is information the fifth form of matter?