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Physics
The second law of thermodynamics is an inviolable law of reality. Here's what everyone should know about closed, open, and isolated systems.
From ancient Greek cosmology to today's mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, explore the relentless quest to understand the Universe's invisible forces.
From unexplained tracks in a balloon-borne experiment to cosmic rays on Earth, the unstable muon was particle physics' biggest surprise.
2023's Nobel Prize was awarded for studying physics on tiny, attosecond-level timescales. Too bad that particle physics happens even faster.
Our greatest tool for exploring the world inside atoms and molecules, and specifically electron transitions, just won 2023's Nobel Prize.
Sci-fi enthusiasts have long hoped that a substance called antimatter might experience gravity opposite that of ordinary matter. It doesn't.
This measurement is crucial to confirm that one of the assumptions of Einstein’s theory of gravity is valid.
Dark matter hasn't been directly detected, but some form of invisible matter is clearly gravitating. Could the graviton hold the answer?
A clock, designed and built in Europe, ran hopelessly at the wrong rate when brought to America. The physics of gravity explains why.
Positron emission tomography (PET) scans use positrons — the antimatter equivalent of an electron — to locate cancer in the body.
As the Manhattan Project headed for completion, German attempts to build a nuclear weapon had already been dismantled.
As Marcel Proust said, “The real voyage of discovery... consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
LK-99, almost certainly, isn't a room-temperature superconductor. The underlying physics of the phenomenon helps us understand why.
The visible Universe extends 46.1 billion light-years from us, while we've probed scales down to as small as ~10^-19 meters.
Is LK-99 truly a room temperature superconductor? These 4 tests, none of which have yet been passed, will separate fact from fiction.
Recent claims put LK-99 as the first room temperature, ambient pressure superconductor ever. Has the game changed, or is it merely hype?
Rocks and minerals don’t simply reflect light. They play with it and interact with light as both a wave and a particle.
Ultracold gases in the lab could help scientists better understand the universe.
Invisible cloaks. Ghost imaging. Scientists are manipulating light in ways that were once only science fiction.
The concept of the warp drive is currently at odds with everything we know to be true about physics.
Some processes, like quantum tunneling, have been shown to occur instantaneously. But the ultimate cosmic speed limit remains unavoidable.
The biggest nuclear blast in history came courtesy of Tsar Bomba. We could make something at least 100 times more powerful.
Michael Faraday's 1834 law of induction was the key experiment behind the eventual discovery of relativity. Einstein admitted it himself.
As the Earth spins and wobbles on its axis and revolves elliptically around the Sun, each day changes from the last. "24 hours" isn't right.
The multiverse pushes beyond the limits of the scientific method. From our vantage point in the Universe, we cannot know if it's real.
Up until 2002, we thought that the heaviest stable element was bismuth: #83 on the periodic table. That's absolutely no longer the case.
Just by observing the tiny amount of deuterium left over from the Big Bang, we can determine that dark matter and dark energy must exist.
If light can't be bent by electric or magnetic fields (and it can't), then how do the Zeeman and Stark effects split atomic energy levels?
There are two methods to measure the expansion rate of the Universe. The results do not agree with each other, and this is a big problem.
The concept of ‘relativistic mass’ has been around almost as long as relativity has. But is it a reasonable way to make sense of things?