Science & Tech

Science & Tech

Explore the discoveries that reveal how the world works, alongside the technologies that extend, reshape, and sometimes challenge what’s possible.

The age of the Universe is only 13.8 billion years, but we know that protons survive much longer. Here’s how. Since the discovery of radioactivity in the 19th century, humanity has […]
After 13.8 billion years, there’s still a whole lot that’s changing as time goes on. With each new year that comes upon us, there are a slew of new events awaiting […]
It’s not a question we know enough to know the answer to, but to dismiss the possibility is scientifically baseless. There’s one question that most of us ask at some […]
It’s a supergiant star in the final stage of its life, and it just dimmed by an enormous amount. What’s going on? When you take a look at the stars in […]
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 […]
The NICER experiment, designed to measure neutron stars as never before, just released their first pulsar map, and it’s amazing. After typical supernovae, remnant collapsed cores of matter are left behind. […]
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 […]
There’s real, straightforward science behind the destruction of an Alderaan-sized planet. In all of science fiction, perhaps the most iconic moment of destruction occurs in 1977’s Star Wars: A New […]
It’s one of the two best meteor showers of the year. Don’t let the full Moon stop you. Every year, as the Earth intercepts the debris streams of comets and asteroids […]
The most famous ‘supernova impostor’ of all could have died back in the 1840s. Here’s what we think kept it alive. In all of astronomy, no stellar event releases more energy […]
We speak with cosmologist Dan Hooper, and ponder the literal edge of what we know about the Universe. Have you ever wondered what the first moments of our Universe were […]
How can physics on the smallest scales affect what the Universe does on its largest ones? Cosmic inflation holds the answer. On a macroscopic level, the Universe appears to be entirely […]
The quest for the ultimate vacuum just got taken to the next level thanks to a new technique: the quantum squeezer. One of the most understated frontiers in all of […]
Even extremely simple configurations in General Relativity cannot be solved exactly. Here’s the science of why. It’s difficult to appreciate how revolutionary of a transformation it is to consider the Universe […]
If this discovery came in a pre-LIGO era, maybe it would have been a surprise. But in 2019, there’s no mystery at all. Did you hear that astronomers had recently […]
In science, breakthroughs don’t always begin with a ‘eureka’ moment. Sometimes, the true story is absolutely unbelievable. When it comes to our Universe’s origin story, many competing ideas once thrived. […]
If it holds up, it would revolutionize physics and be a slam-dunk Nobel Prize. Here’s why that’s unlikely to be the case. Every so often, an experiment comes along in physics […]
The shape of our Universe has long been recognized to be flat. But that isn’t the only possibility. The Universe is expanding, and goes on for farther than even our […]
If an AT-AT walker (or something even larger) wanted to walk across a frozen lake, how thick would the ice have to be? Each winter, one of the most spectacular phenomena […]
The Leonid meteor shower peaks today. Its parent comet taught us where meteor showers come from. Every year, as Earth regularly orbits the Sun, meteor showers repeatedly recur. While August’s Perseids […]