Physics

Most every cosmologist believes the universe is flat. A new analysis argues that it’s closed.

A close look at fundamental symmetries has exposed hidden patterns in the universe. Physicists think that those same symmetries may also reveal time’s original secret.

How do magnetars get so magnetic? A study of stellar explosions shows that the long-accepted theory might be wrong.

Today Google announced that it achieved “quantum supremacy.” Its chief quantum computing rival, IBM, said it hasn’t. The disagreement hinges on what the term really means.

The KATRIN experiment is closing in on the mass of the neutrino, which could point to new laws of particle physics and shape theories of cosmology.

Playing with a simple bean machine illustrates how deterministic laws can produce probabilistic, random-seeming behavior.

John Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing lithium-ion batteries, "the hidden workhorses of the mobile era."

The astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz won half of the prize for their 1995 discovery of a Jupiter-like planet orbiting a nearby star. The cosmologist James Peebles won the other half for work exploring the structure of the universe.

Researchers finally seem to have a quantum computer that can outperform a classical computer. But what does that really mean?