Gravity used to be the most dependable rule in the cosmic rulebook, the quiet background force that never changed its mind.
Cooling metal bars to near absolute zero, suspending microscopic gold beads, or searching for signs that gravity might be quantum: meet the scientists hunting for gravity's elusive nature ...
A new physics paper takes a step toward creating a long-sought "theory of everything" by uniting gravity with the quantum world. However, the new theory remains far from being proven observationally.
Oftentimes, we think of space as an endless, mostly empty vacuum, a silent backdrop where planets, stars, and galaxies play out their dance. We also think of time as something separate, a steady ...
Comet 3I/ATLAS is not just another icy visitor cutting across the night sky. As it hurtles through the inner solar system, ...
Two blind spots torture physicists: the birth of the universe and the center of a black hole. The former may feel like a moment in time and the latter a point in space, but in both cases the normally ...
Massive ripples in the very fabric of space and time wash over Earth constantly, although you'd never notice. An astrophysicist is trying a new search for these gravitational waves. University of ...
Whether space-time exists should neither be controversial nor even conceptually challenging, given the definitions of “space-time,” “events” and “instants.” The idea that space-time exists is no more ...
Spacecrafts don’t just rely on rockets—they use planets to pick up speed! Spacecrafts don’t just rely on rockets—they use planets to pick up speed! It’s called a gravity assist, and it’s one of the ...
If you wave your hand in front of your face, you won’t notice anything particularly interesting. Perhaps a gentle waft of air against your cheek – that’s about it. No epiphany. No major sign that ...
Physics is this close to understanding the entire universe. And what lives in this gap? Many physicists think it’s the elusive graviton—the quantum particle of gravity—whose discovery will finally ...