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By 1913, Albert Einstein had nearly completed general relativity. But a simple mistake set him on a tortured, two-year reconsideration of his theory. Today, mathematicians still grapple with the issues he confronted.
A recently proposed experiment would confirm that gravity is a quantum force.
For decades, physicists have struggled to create a quantum theory of gravity. Now an approach that dates to the 1970s is attracting newfound attention.
Physicists theorize that a new “traversable” kind of wormhole could resolve a baffling paradox and rescue information that falls into black holes.
Reductionism breaks the world into elementary building blocks. Emergence finds the simple laws that arise out of complexity. These two complementary ways of viewing the universe come together in modern theories of quantum gravity.
One of the world’s preeminent theoretical physicists seeks a quiet place to think.
The newly developed theory of emergent gravity, proposed as an alternative to dark matter, struggles in one of its first trials.
Recent calculations tie together two conjectures about gravity, potentially revealing new truths about its elusive quantum nature.
The physicist who designed the LIGO experiment that detected gravitational waves still holes up in a small basement lab surrounded by electronics and optical instruments.