Physics

Building an accurate model of Earth’s climate requires a lot of data. Photography reveals the extreme efforts scientists have undertaken to measure gases, glaciers, clouds and more.

Earth’s radiation can send some molecules spinning or vibrating, which is what makes them greenhouse gases. This infographic explains how relatively few heat-trapping molecules can have a planetary effect.

Over the past 60 years, scientists have largely succeeded in building a computer model of Earth to see what the future holds. One of the most ambitious projects humankind has ever undertaken has now reached a critical moment.

A team of scientists has investigated how Earth’s twin became so inhospitable, and whether the same will happen to our planet.

The James Webb Space Telescope has found a lonely black hole in the early universe that’s as heavy as 50 million suns. A major discovery, the object confounds theories of the young cosmos.

Recent progress on both analog and digital simulations of quantum fields foreshadows a future in which quantum computers could illuminate phenomena that are far too complex for even the most powerful supercomputers.

According to Einstein’s theory of gravity, black holes have only a small handful of distinguishing characteristics. Quantum theory implies they may have more. Now an experimental search finds that any of this extra ‘hair’ has to be pretty short.

New studies of the ‘platypus of materials’ help explain how their atoms arrange themselves into orderly, but nonrepeating, patterns.

For decades, mathematicians have struggled to understand matrices that reflect both order and randomness, like those that model semiconductors. A new method could change that.