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Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex
A new suggestion that complexity increases over time, not just in living organisms but in the nonliving world, promises to rewrite notions of time and evolution.
Is Dark Energy Getting Weaker? New Evidence Strengthens the Case.
Last year, an enormous map of the cosmos hinted that the engine driving cosmic expansion might be sputtering. Now physicists are back with an even bigger map, and a stronger conclusion.
The Road Map to Alien Life Passes Through the ‘Cosmic Shoreline’
Astronomers are ready to search for the fingerprints of life in faraway planetary atmospheres. But first, they need to know where to look — and that means figuring out which planets are likely to have atmospheres in the first place.
‘Next-Level’ Chaos Traces the True Limit of Predictability
In math and computer science, researchers have long understood that some questions are fundamentally unanswerable. Now physicists are exploring how even ordinary physical systems put hard limits on what we can predict, even in principle.
New Maps of the Bizarre, Chaotic Space-Time Inside Black Holes
Physicists hope that understanding the churning region near singularities might help them reconcile gravity and quantum mechanics.
How Hans Bethe Stumbled Upon Perfect Quantum Theories
Quantum calculations amount to sophisticated estimates. But in 1931, Hans Bethe intuited precisely how a chain of particles would behave — an insight that had far-reaching consequences.
How Noether’s Theorem Revolutionized Physics
Emmy Noether showed that fundamental physical laws are just a consequence of simple symmetries. A century later, her insights continue to shape physics.
Cosmologists Try a New Way to Measure the Shape of the Universe
Is the universe flat and infinite, or something more complex? We can’t say for sure, but a new search strategy is mapping out the subtle signals that could reveal if the universe has a shape.
Heat Destroys All Order. Except for in This One Special Case.
Heat is supposed to ruin anything it touches. But physicists have shown that an idealized form of magnetism is heatproof.