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Joe Polchinski’s Restless Pursuit of Quantum Gravity
The pot-stirring string theorist and quantum gravity theorist never sits still for long.
Black-Hole Hunter Takes Aim at Einstein
The astrophysicist Andrea Ghez spent two decades proving that a supermassive black hole anchors the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Her new plan? Test what happens when things get too close.
Strange Noise in Gravitational-Wave Data Sparks Debate
The team that discovered gravitational waves put their data online. Now an independent group of researchers claims that they’ve found what might be a serious problem.
Where Gravity Is Weak and Naked Singularities Are Verboten
Recent calculations tie together two conjectures about gravity, potentially revealing new truths about its elusive quantum nature.
Latest Black Hole Collision Comes With a Twist
The Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory’s third detection further compounds the mystery of why black holes collide.
Discoveries Fuel Fight Over Universe’s First Light
A series of observations at the very edge of the universe has reignited a debate over what lifted the primordial cosmic fog.
The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution
As physicists extend the 19th-century laws of thermodynamics to the quantum realm, they’re rewriting the relationships among energy, entropy and information.
Physicists Uncover Geometric ‘Theory Space’
A decades-old method called the “bootstrap” is enabling new discoveries about the geometry underlying all quantum theories.
What Sonic Black Holes Say About Real Ones
Can a fluid analogue of a black hole point physicists toward the theory of quantum gravity, or is it a red herring?