Physics

After a space telescope disintegrated, astrophysicists had little hope of understanding how supermassive black holes agitate giant galaxies. Then they invented a hack.

By considering simple symmetries, physicists working on the “bootstrap” can rediscover the basic form of the known forces that shape the universe.

For the first time, physicists have calculated exactly what kind of singularity lies at the center of a realistic black hole.

Physicists have long searched for hypothesized dark matter particles called WIMPs. Now, focus may be shifting to the axion — an ultra-lightweight particle whose existence would solve two mysteries at once.

Readers’ modifications of a bean machine showed how deterministic laws are capable of producing random-seeming behavior.

A surprisingly youthful estimate of the age of the rings has stirred a backlash.

Calculations involving a higher dimension are guiding physicists toward a misstep in Stephen Hawking’s legendary black hole analysis.

Three physicists stumbled across an unexpected relationship between some of the most ubiquitous objects in math.

How a young celebrity became one of the first female astronomers at Caltech, befriended Richard Feynman, and ended up the world’s foremost chronicler of the science of the night sky.