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.

Two teams found different ways for quantum computers to process nonlinear systems by first disguising them as linear ones.

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.

Today’s information age is only possible thanks to the groundbreaking work of a lone genius.

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.

Lauren Williams has charted an adventurous mathematical career out of the pieces of a fundamental object called the positive Grassmannian.

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.