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First Support for a Physics Theory of Life
Take chemistry, add energy, get life. The first tests of Jeremy England’s provocative origin-of-life hypothesis are in, and they appear to show how order can arise from nothing.
Eva Silverstein’s Spirals and Strings
Daily bike rides, serendipitous interactions and long periods of solo thinking inspire this string cosmologist.
Lucky Break Leads to Controversial Supernova Discovery
Supernova hunters were able to train their telescopes on a recent eruption just hours after it exploded. What they found only adds to the growing list of questions surrounding these cosmic blasts.
Strange Noise in Gravitational-Wave Data Sparks Debate
The team that discovered gravitational waves put their data online. Now an independent group of researchers claims that they’ve found what might be a serious problem.
Planet Nine Is Put on Trial in Absentia
Breathless media coverage notwithstanding, the cases for and against a hypothetical Planet Nine in the outskirts of the solar system remain inconclusive.
Juan Maldacena, Pondering Quantum Gravity by the Pond
One of the world’s preeminent theoretical physicists seeks a quiet place to think.
Researchers Check Space-Time to See if It’s Made of Quantum Bits
The newly developed theory of emergent gravity, proposed as an alternative to dark matter, struggles in one of its first trials.
Where Gravity Is Weak and Naked Singularities Are Verboten
Recent calculations tie together two conjectures about gravity, potentially revealing new truths about its elusive quantum nature.
Roberto Peccei and Helen Quinn, Driving Around Stanford in a Clunky Jeep
The two physicists who introduced Peccei-Quinn symmetry came up with their idea on and around Stanford University’s campus 40 years ago.