Physics

For decades, astronomers debated whether a particular smudge was close-by and small, or distant and huge. A new X-ray map supports the massive option.

Online comment platforms can bring out the best — and the worst — in people. At the end of a tumultuous year, Quanta’s editors highlight some of our favorite things you had to say.

Featuring paradoxical black holes, room-temperature superconductors and a new escape from the prison of time.

We don’t know why the universe appears to be expanding faster than it should. New ultra-precise distance measurements have only intensified the problem.

Over the past two years, astronomers have rewritten the story of our galaxy.

The result highlights a fundamental tension: Either the rules of quantum mechanics don’t always apply, or at least one basic assumption about reality must be wrong.

A team in Paris has made the most precise measurement yet of the fine-structure constant, killing hopes for a new force of nature.

Has physics reached the limits of what we can discover — or are the possibilities only just beginning?

Physicists plan to leave no stone unturned, checking whether dark matter tickles different types of detectors, nudges starlight, warms planetary cores or even lodges in rocks.