When you hear ‘quantum,’ you probably think of splitting everything into discrete, indivisible chunks. That’s not necessarily right. If you want to learn what the Universe is made out of […]

If you think about the way a gravitational wave detector works, you might encounter a paradox. Here’s the solution. One of the greatest scientific achievements in all of human history […]

100+ years ago, General Relativity came along, and Einstein gave the Universe a cosmological constant. Here’s why that was a mistake. Back in the 17th century, Isaac Newton put forth the […]

It’s been spectacularly confirmed by observation, but theoretically, it couldn’t have been any other way. If the Sun were to spontaneously cease emitting light, we wouldn’t know about it for about […]

Traveling interstellar distances in human lifetimes is an amazing dream, but it won’t ever be achieved like this. For centuries, ever since we realized that every star we can see in […]

If you think that the Moon is only good for reflecting sunlight, you’ve got another think coming. To human eyes, the Moon is the second brightest visible object, trailing only the […]

Many deserving potential awardees were snubbed by the Nobel committee. But this takes the cake. Every October, the Nobel foundation awards prizes celebrating the greatest advances in numerous scientific fields. Alfred […]

It’s not about whether speculating theorists are right; it’s about looking where humanity has never looked before. The Large Hadron Collider, located at CERN, is the most powerful particle accelerator and […]

Even though it was the crowning achievement of Einstein’s career, he was only a small part of the full story. If you were a physicist in the early 20th century, there […]

As soon as you start thinking about energy and gravity, you’ll realize the need to go beyond it. When it comes to a science like physics, theoretical expectations must always be […]

You might think that we live in a three dimensional Universe based on space alone. But you cannot leave time out of it. If you were asked to describe how you […]

It’s perhaps the most famous equation of all, with lessons about reality for every one of us. If you’ve ever heard of Albert Einstein, chances are you know at least one […]

Many of them are spinning at nearly the speed of light. When you do the math, there’s no other way it could have been. Take a look out there at the […]

When you’re trying to peel back the veil obscuring the fundamental nature of matter, you have to look absolutely everywhere. Sometimes, the solution to a puzzle you’ve been stymied by […]

General Relativity has nothing to do with light or electromagnetism at all. So how to gravitational waves know to travel at the speed of light? There are two fundamental classes of […]

From explosions to their unique and vibrant colors, the fireworks displays we adore require quantum physics. This Thursday, July 4, 2019, is remarkable for a number of reasons. It happens to […]

The quest for a quantum theory of gravity is the holy grail of physics. Here’s why it’s murkier than anyone expected. If you want to fully describe how the Universe […]

If you think nothing can move faster than light, check out this clever way to defeat that limit. Nothing can move faster than the speed of light. When Einstein set forth […]

The Planck length is a lot smaller than anything we’ve ever accessed. But is it a true limit? If you wanted to understand how our Universe operates, you’d have to examine […]

The summer solstice is the longest day of the year, but doesn’t have the earliest sunrise or the latest sunset. Here’s why. The length of a day on planet Earth might […]

It’s where Earth’s axial tilt with respect to the Sun is most extreme. Here are the consequences. Today is June 21st, 2019: the day of the solstice. Although there are […]

Has the mystery really been solved? Doubtful. The real science goes much deeper. For perhaps the last year or so, a small galaxy located not too far away has captivated the […]

13.8 billion years isn’t close to enough time, but if we wait long enough, even our Sun will become one. The Big Bang happened approximately 13.8 billion years ago, and it […]

Everything on Earth is made of atoms and their building blocks. Without this one rule, they’d never make anything interesting. Take a look around you at everything on Earth. If […]

Neither one reflects the other; they’re both blue for entirely different reasons. If you’ve ever been curious about the world you live in, you’ve probably wondered why the sky is […]

It might be the biggest conundrum facing cosmology today. But perhaps it’s not a controversy; it might be a clue. https://soundcloud.com/ethan-siegel-172073460/starts-with-a-bang-44-the-expanding-universe/ One of the biggest conundrums in the Universe surrounds the […]

Xenon-124 isn’t stable, and the direct detection of its decay could lead us to an even greater prize. Our Universe is old: 13.8 billion years old, to be precise. Many of […]

It’s the technique, from the Event Horizon Telescope, that brought us a black hole’s image. Here’s how it works. The Event Horizon Telescope has accomplished what no other telescope or telescope […]

When the Universe gives us clues, we ignore them at our own peril. When you approach the world scientifically, you seek to gain knowledge about how it works by asking it […]

What should a black hole look like? Our theoretical predictions are about to meet our first observations. In science, there’s no moment more exciting than when you get to confront […]