Physics

Physics

There could be variables beyond the ones we've identified and know how to measure. But they can't get rid of quantum weirdness.
Diagram showing a galaxy, zooming in to highlight a small area labeled "Human Experience" within a grid mapping time and space on logarithmic scales.
Science helps us imagine the vastness of space and time — and our small but meaningful place within it.
The Universe was born incredibly hot, and has expanded and cooled ever since. Could life have begun back when space was "room temperature?"
space expanding
Just 13.8 billion years after the hot Big Bang, we can see 46.1 billion light-years away in all directions. Doesn't that violate...something?
A person in a suit holds up a NOAA map showing the forecast track and intensity of Hurricane Dorian, reminding us that, unlike Einstein, we can't change the facts—only prepare for them—in an office setting.
Einstein is credited with saying, "If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." What he actually said has a very different meaning.
A person inspects a large, cylindrical section of a Higgs factory tunnel lined with metal pipes, cables, and equipment—a crucial site for particle physics research.
A next-generation collider is required for studying particle physics at the frontiers. Here's the fastest, cheapest way to get it done.
parallel universe
Parallel universes are among the most profound notions in all of quantum physics. It's a compelling and fascinating idea, but is it true?
Amplifying the energy within a laser, over and over, won't get you an infinite amount of energy. There's a fundamental limit due to physics.
Abstract digital artwork featuring concentric blue circles, lines, and green geometric shapes over a dark blue and black textured background, evoking a sense of vibe physics within its captivating composition.
The conversation you're having with an LLM about groundbreaking new ideas in theoretical physics is completely meritless. Here's why.
The Big Bang was hot, dense, uniform, and filled with matter and energy. Before that? There was nothing. Here's how that's possible.
A woman with curly hair sits in a chair holding an open book, looking to the side, surrounded by strange books, drawn white pentagrams, and a lit candle nearby.
Some books are remembered for their lyrical prose or engaging stories. Others are remembered for simply being weird.
quantum particles
Realizing that matter and energy are quantized is important, but quantum particles aren't the full story; quantum fields are needed, too.
levitation
With the right material at the right temperature and a magnetic track, physics really does allow perpetual motion without energy loss.
bounce ball
Whether you run the clock forward or backward, most of us expect the laws of physics to be the same. A 2012 experiment showed otherwise.
Green abstract image with floating, glowing funnel-shaped objects and spherical wireframe shapes evokes a black hole universe, all set against a misty green background with ethereal light streaks.
Once you cross a black hole's event horizon, there's no going back. But inside, could creating a singularity give birth to a new Universe?
F = ma fall up
From high school through the professional ranks, physicists still take incredible lessons away from Newton's second law.
Two glowing spheres, one red and one green, face each other in space with a wavy line of light—like a particle physics collision—connecting them against a speckled dark background reminiscent of the last collider’s discoveries.
Will we build a successor collider to the LHC? Someday, we'll reach the true limit of what experiments can probe. But that won't be the end.
A visual simulation of two objects orbiting and merging, distorting a red-orange grid representing spacetime—illustrating gravitational waves once thought to be the worst prediction in science.
The measured value of the cosmological constant is 120 orders of magnitude smaller than what's predicted. How can this paradox be resolved?
The CMB has long been considered the Big Bang's "smoking gun" evidence. But after what JWST saw, might it come from early galaxies instead?
A magnifying glass focusing on concentric circles against a plain teal background.
19mins
"It's a very, very beautiful calculation, but it's the best example I know of the relationship between these rather abstract quantities perhaps and something that you can look at in a telescope."
Images show the planet Uranus. The left image highlights its bright rings, while the right image, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope, depicts surprising details of glowing rings and a cloudy atmosphere. Discover more wonders in our solar system with these stunning visuals.
Once every 12 years, Earth, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune all line up, opening a window for a joint mission. Our next chance arrives in 2034.
Infographic illustrating three steps to measure the Hubble Constant, showing Cepheid variable stars, supernovae, and galaxies at increasing distances with redshifted light—highlighting how these methods reveal that the hubble tension is real.
Is the Universe's expansion rate 67 km/s/Mpc, 73 km/s/Mpc, or somewhere in between? The Hubble tension is real and not so easy to resolve.
parallel universe
The ANITA experiment found cosmic rays shooting out of Antarctica. One interpretation claims "parallel Universes," but is that right?
A composite image showing a galaxy with red circles marking stars on the left and multicolored expanding rings with Earth on the right, all set against a grid background, illustrating concepts like Hubble tension studied by Wendy Freedman.
Different methods of measuring the Universe's expansion rate yield high-precision, incompatible answers. But is the problem robustly real?
Circular astronomical image showing constellations and celestial objects labeled against a dark sky, reminiscent of a NASA PUNCH video sun corona visualization, with a timestamp of 2025-06-03 01:52 at the bottom left.
Launched in March, the PUNCH mission has viewed two incredible coronal mass ejections, tracking them farther from the Sun than ever before.
A digital illustration showing a glowing blue particle on the left, evoking cosmic inflation, transitioning into a geometric, grid-like structure on a purple background on the right.
A few physical quantities, in all laboratory experiments, are always conserved: including energy. But for the entire Universe? Not so much.
Timeline of the universe from the Big Bang, as described in cosmology, showing inflation, formation of atoms, stars, galaxies, and expansion to the present day over 13.8 billion years.
If you want to understand the Universe, cosmologically, you just can't do it without the Friedmann equation. With it, the cosmos is yours.