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Natalie Wolchover

Columnist

Latest Articles

The Particle That Broke a Cosmic Speed Limit

May 14, 2015

Physicists are beginning to unravel the mysteries of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays, particles accelerated by the most powerful forces in the universe.

Q&A

Concerns of an Artificial Intelligence Pioneer

April 21, 2015

Computer scientist Stuart Russell wants to ensure that our increasingly intelligent machines remain aligned with human values.

‘Penguin’ Anomaly Hints at Missing Particles

March 20, 2015

A statistical anomaly in the signal from rare particle decays at the Large Hadron Collider offers hope that new discoveries might be around the corner.

Strange Stars Pulse to the Golden Mean

March 10, 2015

Nature has revealed peculiar mathematical objects that connect order and chaos.

In LHC’s Shadow, America’s Collider Awakens

March 6, 2015

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider fired up for its 15th run to take a deeper look at the building blocks of atoms.

In Fake Universes, Evidence for String Theory

February 18, 2015

If string theorists can show that their framework is the only consistent theory of quantum gravity, does that make it true even without tangible evidence?

Joint Dust Analysis Deflates Big Bang Signal

January 30, 2015

No definitive evidence for cosmic inflation is found, but support remains strong for the theory even as critics highlight its shortcomings as an explanation for how and why the universe began.

Scientists Conjure Curves From Flatness

January 6, 2015

Researchers have found a set of rules for imbuing flat surfaces with curvature, enabling them to form a virtually unlimited range of three-dimensional structures.

A Common Logic to Seeing Cats and Cosmos

December 4, 2014

New research suggests physicists, computers and brains employ the same procedure to tease out important features from among other irrelevant bits of data.