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Physics
Practically all of the matter we see and interact with is made of atoms, which are mostly empty space. Then why is reality so... solid?
If the electromagnetic and weak forces unify to make the electroweak force, maybe, at higher energies, something even grander happens?
Lord Kelvin is thought to have said there was nothing new to discover in physics. His real view was the opposite.
In the infant Universe, particle physics reigned supreme.
First derived by Emmy Noether, for every symmetry a theory possesses, there's an associated conserved quantity. Here's the profound link.
Even if you aren't in the path of totality, you can still use the solar eclipse to measure how long it takes the Moon to orbit Earth.
Physicists just can't leave an incomplete theory alone; they try to repair it. When nature is kind, it can lead to a major breakthrough.
Symmetries aren't just about folding or rotating a piece of paper, but have a profound array of applications when it comes to physics.
Leap day only comes once every four years, including in 2024. But the reason we have it, including when we do and don't, may surprise you.
Everything acts like a wave while it propagates, but behaves like a particle whenever it interacts. The origins of this duality go way back.
So far, gravitational waves have revealed stellar mass black holes and neutron stars, plus a cosmic background. So much more is coming.
For thousands of years, humanity had no idea how far away the stars were. In the 1600s, Newton, Huygens, and Hooke all claimed to get there.
Although many of Einstein's papers revolutionized physics, there's one Einsteinian advance, generally, that towers over all the rest.
Recent measurements of CERN data seem to disagree with standard-model predictions about how the Higgs boson decays, though further analysis is needed to confirm the observations.
As planets with too many volatiles and too little mass orbit their parent stars, their atmospheres photoevaporate, spelling doom for some.
The DUNE project will beam tiny neutrinos across vast distances. But the first step involved moving a heavier material: 1 million tons of rock.
Explore how QBism reframes science by placing the observer at the heart of quantum reality.
The midwest is particularly filled with them.
Each time you fold a piece of paper, you double the paper's thickness. It doesn't take all that long to even reach the Moon.
Figuring out the answer involved a prism, a pail of water, and a 50 year effort by the most famous father-son astronomer duo ever.
In our Universe, matter is made of particles, while antimatter is made of antiparticles. But sometimes, the physical lines get real blurry.
It’s not just fun: DNA origami has the potential to revolutionize engineering at the nanoscopic scale.
The paper does not prove the existence of dark matter, but it mostly eliminates a rival theory called Modified Newtonian Dynamics.
Roger Babson wanted a “partial insulator, reflector, or absorber of gravity” — something, anything, that would stop or dampen it.
Two of the answers add a dimension to physics that doesn’t belong there. Maybe we could call it "astrotheology."
When we look at our Sun, its properties are incredibly constant, varying by merely ~0.1% over time. But all stars don't play by those rules.
Light can be turned into heat, which can then be turned into motion, and the effect of that motion can be turned into a big squeeze.
All matter particles can act as waves, and massless light waves show particle-like behavior. Can gravitational waves also be particle-like?
The combined intellectual heft of multiple “big thinkers” delivered arguably the most successful scientific theory in history.
There's a quantum limit to how precisely anything can be measured. By squeezing light, LIGO has now surpassed all previous limitations.