Archive

A new theory explains the seemingly irreversible arrow of time while yielding insights into entropy, quantum computers, black holes, and the past-future divide.

Knowing the rules behind ant-made structures could help scientists understand how other complex systems emerge in nature.

Support is growing for a decades-old physics idea suggesting that localized episodes of disordered brain activity help keep the overall system in healthy balance.

A conversation with the mathematical physicist Freeman Dyson on quantum electrodynamics, climate change and his latest pet project.

Scientists report the possible discovery of primordial gravitational waves, ripples in space-time that carry a record of how the universe began.

New calculations suggest physicists may someday discover a fundamental theory of gravity, but it could require a radical new perspective on the universe.

A large new study of ovenbird lineages questions the extent to which competing species push each other to evolve.

A new analysis strengthens the case that gamma rays emanating from the center of the Milky Way come from dark matter particles known as WIMPs.

A daring speculation offers a potential way forward in one of the great unsolved problems of mathematics: the behavior of the Navier-Stokes equations for fluid flow.