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The Year in Physics
Featuring paradoxical black holes, room-temperature superconductors and a new escape from the prison of time.
How Claude Shannon Invented the Future
Today’s information age is only possible thanks to the groundbreaking work of a lone genius.
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.
A Mathematician’s Unanticipated Journey Through the Physical World
Lauren Williams has charted an adventurous mathematical career out of the pieces of a fundamental object called the positive Grassmannian.
The New History of the Milky Way
Over the past two years, astronomers have rewritten the story of our galaxy.
A New Theorem Maps Out the Limits of Quantum Physics
The result highlights a fundamental tension: Either the rules of quantum mechanics don’t always apply, or at least one basic assumption about reality must be wrong.
Physicists Nail Down the ‘Magic Number’ That Shapes the Universe
A team in Paris has made the most precise measurement yet of the fine-structure constant, killing hopes for a new force of nature.
Contemplating the End of Physics
Has physics reached the limits of what we can discover — or are the possibilities only just beginning?
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.