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Astronomers Dig Up the Stars That Birthed the Milky Way
There once was a cosmic seed that sprouted the Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers have discovered its last surviving remnants.
Wormhole Experiment Called Into Question
Last fall, a team of physicists announced that they had teleported a qubit through a holographic wormhole in a quantum computer. Now another group suggests that’s not quite what happened.
Shadows in the Big Bang Afterglow Reveal Invisible Cosmic Structures
Cosmologists are using secondary signatures from the cosmic microwave background to map the universe’s hidden matter.
Room-Temperature Superconductor Discovery Meets With Resistance
A paper in Nature reports the discovery of a superconductor that operates at room temperatures and near-room pressures. The claim has divided the research community.
Black Holes Will Eventually Destroy All Quantum States, Researchers Argue
New calculations suggest that the event horizons around black holes will ‘decohere’ quantum possibilities — even those that are far away.
Strange Solar Gamma Rays Discovered at Even Higher Energies
There appear to be too many gamma rays coming from the sun. New higher-energy measurements reveal that this excess continues for a bit, then disappears — a cutoff that could help clarify what’s going on.
Physicists Use Quantum Mechanics to Pull Energy out of Nothing
The quantum energy teleportation protocol was proposed in 2008 and largely ignored. Now two independent experiments have shown that it works.
How Will the Universe End?
Big Freeze, Big Rip, Big Crunch, Bounce or vacuum decay? Steven Strogatz speaks with theoretical cosmologist Katie Mack about the five ways that scientists think the universe could come to an end.
The Joy of Asking About Infinity, Jellyfish and the End of the Universe
As The Joy of Why podcast returns for a second season, producer Polly Stryker and host Steven Strogatz invite listeners to join them and their brilliant new guests on another voyage of discovery.