Physics

A decades-old method called the “bootstrap” is enabling new discoveries about the geometry underlying all quantum theories.

Can balloon animals help blunt uneasy feelings about “spooky action at a distance”?

Physicists are closing the door on an intriguing loophole around the quantum phenomenon Einstein called “spooky action at a distance.”

When do negative results from a half-life experiment mean a theory is dead?

Life was long thought to obey its own set of rules. But as simple systems show signs of lifelike behavior, scientists are arguing about whether this apparent complexity is all a consequence of thermodynamics.

Life might have originated in droplets that behave surprisingly like living cells.

Researchers have discovered that simple “chemically active” droplets grow to the size of cells and spontaneously divide, suggesting they might have evolved into the first living cells.

Gaining an intuition about half-life requires some unintuitive thinking.

Elena Aprile now leads the world’s most sensitive dark-matter search. But before she could build her first detector, she had to make herself out of titanium.