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First Support for a Physics Theory of Life

July 26, 2017

Take chemistry, add energy, get life. The first tests of Jeremy England’s provocative origin-of-life hypothesis are in, and they appear to show how order can arise from nothing.

Lucky Break Leads to Controversial Supernova Discovery

July 5, 2017

Supernova hunters were able to train their telescopes on a recent eruption just hours after it exploded. What they found only adds to the growing list of questions surrounding these cosmic blasts.

Strange Noise in Gravitational-Wave Data Sparks Debate

June 30, 2017

The team that discovered gravitational waves put their data online. Now an independent group of researchers claims that they’ve found what might be a serious problem.

Planet Nine Is Put on Trial in Absentia

June 27, 2017

Breathless media coverage notwithstanding, the cases for and against a hypothetical Planet Nine in the outskirts of the solar system remain inconclusive.

Researchers Check Space-Time to See if It’s Made of Quantum Bits

June 21, 2017

The newly developed theory of emergent gravity, proposed as an alternative to dark matter, struggles in one of its first trials.

Where Gravity Is Weak and Naked Singularities Are Verboten

June 20, 2017

Recent calculations tie together two conjectures about gravity, potentially revealing new truths about its elusive quantum nature.

How Superfluid Dark Matter Mimics an Old Idea About Gravity

June 13, 2017

Does the force of gravity change at large scales? Perhaps not, but a new theory of dark matter shows why that could appear to be the case.

Dark Matter Recipe Calls for One Part Superfluid

June 13, 2017

A different kind of dark matter could help to resolve an old celestial conundrum.

A Theory of Reality as More Than the Sum of Its Parts

June 1, 2017

New math shows how, contrary to conventional scientific wisdom, conscious beings and other macroscopic entities might have greater influence over the future than do the sum of their microscopic components.

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