Natalie Wolchover

New findings are fueling an old suspicion that fundamental particles and forces spring from strange eight-part numbers called “octonions.”

If and when physicists are able to pin down the metal content of the sun, that number could upend much of what we thought we knew about the evolution and life span of stars.

Computer simulations have become so accurate that cosmologists can now use them to study dark matter, supermassive black holes and other mysteries of the real evolving cosmos.

A living, breathing garden in Seattle serves as the perfect backdrop to an astrobiologist’s search for life on faraway planets.

An experiment at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago has detected far more electron neutrinos than predicted — a possible harbinger of a revolutionary new elementary particle called the sterile neutrino, though many physicists remain skeptical.

When a crystallographer treated prime numbers as a system of particles, the resulting diffraction pattern created a new view of existing conjectures in number theory.

A roundup of some of the most important discoveries gleaned so far from the Gaia space observatory’s new map of the galaxy.

In new computer experiments, artificial-intelligence algorithms can tell the future of chaotic systems.

Independent scientists have cast serious doubt on a claimed detection of dark matter.