Fundamental physics

Physicists are reexamining a longstanding assumption: that big stuff consists of smaller stuff.

The “gravitational memory effect” predicts that a passing gravitational wave should forever alter the structure of space-time. Physicists have linked the phenomenon to fundamental cosmic symmetries and a potential solution to the black hole information paradox.

An enigmatic connection between the forces of nature is allowing physicists to explore gravity’s quantum side.

Chiara Marletto is trying to build a master theory — a set of ideas so fundamental that all other theories would spring from it. Her first step: Invoke the impossible.

A recent test has confirmed the predictions of quantum trajectory theory.

Lee Smolin’s radical idea to reimagine how we view the universe.

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

Scientists seek a single description of reality. But modern physics allows for many different descriptions, many equivalent to one another, connected through a vast landscape of mathematical possibility.

Physicists are confronting their “nightmare scenario.” What does the absence of new particles suggest about how nature works?