Clik here to view.
Physicists unveil 10-year plan for exploring the quantum Universe
After a multi-year review, the U.S. particle physics community has announced its vision for research spanning the next five to ten years. The various projects could, if funded, help researchers develop...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Earth’s core has a gas leak
In the turbulent forging of the early Earth, density was destiny. Heat from asteroid impacts and radioactive decay turned a mass of primordial rubble, held together by gravity, into a seething, molten...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How fast is gravity, exactly?
Of all of the fundamental forces known to humanity, gravity is both the most familiar and the one that holds the Universe together, connecting distant galaxies in a vast and interconnected cosmic web....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Have we gotten dark matter all wrong?
In the 1930s, the bolo-tie-wearing astronomer Fritz Zwicky found something strange in the motions of galaxies. They were moving far too quickly within their clusters than they should be, based on their...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The “sharp-tongued” physicist who everyone was scared of
The history of theoretical physics is chock-full of quirky characters with eccentric personalities. To travel down mind-bending mathematical and universal rabbit holes, one must be a bit mad, after...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What does the center of a black hole look like?
A black hole is one of the most fascinating of all cosmic phenomena. Essentially, black holes are locations in space that completely overturn our intuition of how space and time behave. In movies, they...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Astronomers use AI to shed light on dark energy
Astronomers have known for nearly a century that our Universe is expanding. For decades, scientists expected this expansion to be slowing down due to the force of gravity. However, that all changed in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Scientists finally find mysterious mesospheric ghosts
On a spring night in 2019, in the bowels of Tornado Alley, nature documentarian Hank Schyma was out photographing a storm when he captured something mysterious. A “ghost,” but not of the paranormal...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Surprising discovery challenges key principle of modern cosmology
At a recent meeting of the American Astronomical Society, researchers announced a surprising discovery — one that will add to a growing list of astronomical anomalies that run afoul of one of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Life in the Universe: It’s either everywhere or nowhere
My colleague Ian Crawford and I recently made a bet — a little bet with potentially big consequences. In a paper recently published in Nature Astronomy, Ian — a planetary scientist and astrobiologist...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“Spaghettification”: How black holes stretch objects into oblivion
In all of the Universe, there is nothing quite so mind-bending as a black hole. Black holes are usually the corpses of long-dead stars — ones that lived and died in a blinding flash called a supernova....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ice plumes could reveal signs of life on Europa and Enceladus
In their ongoing hunt for extraterrestrial life, astronomers are searching for three key ingredients: liquid water, a source of energy, and complex organic molecules, which make up the basic building...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Inside the mile-deep mission to solve a key physics mystery
Neutrinos are the ghosts of the subatomic world. Engaging in only the most tenuous of interactions with ordinary matter, they can pass through the entire Earth with only minuscule chances of any...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Measurements of rare Higgs boson decay may show cracks in physics theory
In July 2012, physicists briefly enjoyed a barrage of publicity usually reserved for tabloid stories about Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift. International news outlets like The New York Times and BBC...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Muon mystery: New measurements challenge quantum theory
Science advances in a couple of ways. Occasionally, scientists will stumble upon some peculiar phenomenon that, upon investigation, reveals something very new. X-rays, radiation, and penicillin come to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The violent birth of the moon
In the beginning, about 4.6 billion years ago, all was chaos within a cloud of gas left over from a previous generation of stars. There was nothing but molecules of dust and gas, swirling around in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Germany had 90 minutes to prepare for a beach ball-sized meteorite impact
Earth is being pummeled by meteorites daily, but most of its residents aren’t even aware. According to NASA’s planetary defense system Scout, nearly 50 tons of meteoritic matter hit the planet daily....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why interstellar objects like ‘Oumuamua and Borisov may hold clues to exoplanets
On October 17 and 18, 2017, an unusual object sped across the field of view of a large telescope perched near the summit of a volcano on the Hawaiian island of Maui. The Pan-STARRS1 telescope was...
View ArticleClik here to view.
There are more active volcanoes than you think
Many people know that Naples is built on two very active volcanoes, Vesuvius and Campi Flegrei, and that it is one of the cities most at risk from volcanic activity in the world. But practically nobody...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How particle accelerators recreate the Universe’s first moments
The theory of the Big Bang tells of a time nearly 14 billion years ago when the Universe was a much hotter place. But how can we know what the Universe was truly like so long ago? A time machine would...
View ArticleClik here to view.
In 1894, physics seemed complete. Then Kelvin spotted 2 looming “clouds”
As the nineteenth century drew to a close, you would have forgiven physicists for hoping that they were on track to understand everything. The universe, according to this tentative picture, was made of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Is the multiverse real? Here’s how physicists approach the theories
By instinct and tradition, humankind has sought to understand its environment as thoroughly as possible — to ward off dangers, embrace beneficial opportunities, and make helpful predictions. Charting...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A quick 13.8-billion-year story of our Universe
Despite what you might have been told, the universe didn’t begin, not really. It’s tempting to picture the embryonic universe, before the Big Bang, as a seed, pregnant with all the possibility of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The best clues to life on Mars could be in these Idaho fossils
Does life exist elsewhere in the universe? If so, how do scientists search for and identify it? Finding life beyond Earth is extremely difficult, partly because other planets are so far away and partly...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How does blood spatter in space?
Humans are increasingly pushing into space: NASA’s Artemis program plans to return astronauts to the moon and establish a permanent orbiting lab in the next few years, and private companies like Blue...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Could our first alien contact be with intelligent spiders?
In Adrian Tchaikovsky’s 2015 science fiction novel Children of Time, a planet-wide evolutionary biology experiment goes wrong. Well, wrong from a human perspective. Instead of creating intelligent...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The case for stopping efforts to contact aliens
The new Netflix series 3 Body Problem, based on Cixin Liu’s epic science-fiction trilogy, reignites an old debate among researchers concerned with the possibility of extraterrestrial communication. In...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The “Big Crunch”: New dark energy data raises questions about Universe’s fate
Every culture has a story of the eschaton: the end of time. In Norse mythology, the world will end in an epic battle called Ragnarök, with gods fighting the Ice Giants. In Christian lore, the book of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why a James Webb Space Telescope mystery doesn’t (necessarily) break cosmology
On Christmas Day, 2021, an Ariane 5 rocket leaped from its launch pad in French Guiana. Perched on the rocket’s nose was the long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The JWST was designed to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Gaiasignatures: A new way to search for alien life
Hunting for life on other planets is hard; it’s like trying to spot an ant on the other end of a football field. The closest potential host, Venus, is 25 million miles away. Beyond our Solar System,...
View Article
