Latest Articles
Singularities in Space-Time Prove Hard to Kill
Black hole and Big Bang singularities break our best theory of gravity. A trilogy of theorems hints that physicists must go to the ends of space and time to find a fix.
Finding Beauty and Truth in Mundane Occurrences
The physicist Sidney Nagel delights in solving mysteries of the universe that are hiding in plain sight.
Is Dark Energy Getting Weaker? New Evidence Strengthens the Case.
Last year, an enormous map of the cosmos hinted that the engine driving cosmic expansion might be sputtering. Now physicists are back with an even bigger map, and a stronger conclusion.
‘Next-Level’ Chaos Traces the True Limit of Predictability
In math and computer science, researchers have long understood that some questions are fundamentally unanswerable. Now physicists are exploring how even ordinary physical systems put hard limits on what we can predict, even in principle.
Heat Destroys All Order. Except for in This One Special Case.
Heat is supposed to ruin anything it touches. But physicists have shown that an idealized form of magnetism is heatproof.
Exotic New Superconductors Delight and Confound
Three new species of superconductivity were spotted this year, illustrating the myriad ways electrons can join together to form a frictionless quantum soup.
It Might Be Possible to Detect Gravitons After All
A new experimental proposal suggests detecting a particle of gravity is far easier than anyone imagined. Now physicists are debating what it would really prove.
Can Space-Time Be Saved?
Curious connections between physics and math suggest to Latham Boyle that space-time may survive the jump to the next theory of reality.
Physicists Reveal a Quantum Geometry That Exists Outside of Space and Time
A decade after the discovery of the “amplituhedron,” physicists have excavated more of the timeless geometry underlying the standard picture of how particles move.