Physics

Maintenance of the software that’s used for the hardest physics calculations rests almost entirely with a retiree. The situation reveals the problematic incentive structure of academia.

The unprecedented experiment explores the possibility that space-time somehow emerges from quantum information.

Two physicists have calculated that the universe has a higher entropy — and is therefore more likely — than alternative possible universes.

Albert Einstein’s ideas about space-time aren’t exactly intuitive, and they aren’t exactly Einstein’s, either.

A growing catalog of huge but dim galaxies such as Dragonfly 44 is forcing astronomers to invent new theories of galactic evolution.

For Lisa Kaltenegger and her generation of exoplanet astronomers, decades of planning have set the stage for an epochal detection.

A recent gamma-ray burst known as the BOAT — “brightest of all time” — appears to have produced a high-energy particle that shouldn’t exist. For some, dark matter provides the explanation.

Physical-collapse theories have long offered a natural solution to the central mystery of the quantum world. But a series of increasingly precise experiments are making them untenable.

The positively charged particle at the heart of the atom is an object of unspeakable complexity, one that changes its appearance depending on how it is probed.