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Cosmologists Parry Attacks on the Vaunted Cosmological Principle
A central pillar of cosmology — the universe is the same everywhere and in all directions — is surviving a storm of possible evidence against it.
The Webb Space Telescope Will Rewrite Cosmic History. If It Works.
The James Webb Space Telescope has the potential to rewrite the history of the cosmos and reshape humanity’s position within it. But first, a lot of things have to work just right.
Laws of Logic Lead to New Restrictions on the Big Bang
Physicists are translating commonsense principles into strict mathematical constraints on how our universe must have behaved at the beginning of time.
How Steven Weinberg Transformed Physics and Physicists
When Steven Weinberg died last month, the world lost one of its most profound thinkers.
Growing Inventory of Black Holes Offers a Radical Probe of the Cosmos
One black hole is nice, but astrophysicists can do a lot more science with 50 of them.
Physicists Study How Universes Might Bubble Up and Collide
Since they can’t prod actual universes as they inflate and bump into each other in the hypothetical multiverse, physicists are studying digital and physical analogs of the process.
The Year in Physics
Featuring paradoxical black holes, room-temperature superconductors and a new escape from the prison of time.
Astronomers Get Their Wish, and a Cosmic Crisis Gets Worse
We don’t know why the universe appears to be expanding faster than it should. New ultra-precise distance measurements have only intensified the problem.
The Search for Dark Matter Is Dramatically Expanding
Physicists plan to leave no stone unturned, checking whether dark matter tickles different types of detectors, nudges starlight, warms planetary cores or even lodges in rocks.