Space-time

The philosopher Karen Crowther digs into how the space-time fabric could possibly emerge from something non-spatiotemporal.

These three imagined scenarios lead many physicists to doubt that space-time is fundamental.

Until his dying days, the giant of 20th-century physics obsessed over the underpinnings of space and time, and how we can all share the same version of them.

This special issue of Quanta Magazine explores the ultimate scientific quest: the search for the fundamental nature of reality.

Eugenio Calabi, who died on September 25, conceived of novel geometric objects that later became fundamental to string theory.

Inside of a black hole, the two theoretical pillars of 20th-century physics appear to clash. Now a group of young physicists think they have resolved the conflict by appealing to the central pillar of the new century — the physics of quantum information.

For decades, physicists have struggled to develop a quantum theory of gravity. But what if gravity — and space-time — are fundamentally classical?

Astronomers have found a background din of exceptionally long-wavelength gravitational waves pervading the cosmos.

Renate Loll has helped pioneer a radically new approach to quantum gravity. She assumes that the fabric of space-time is a blend of all possible fabrics, and she has developed the computational tools needed to calculate the far-reaching implications of that assumption.