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Physics

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Why Locusts Swarm, Humans Do Good and Time Marches On

January 25, 2024

The Joy of Why podcast returns for a third season, with two co-hosts, 24 brilliant guests and 24 all-new episodes.

The Best Neighborhoods for Starting a Life in the Galaxy

January 24, 2024

Some neighborhoods in the Milky Way may be better suited for making habitable planets than others.

Clashing Cosmic Numbers Challenge Our Best Theory of the Universe

January 19, 2024

As measurements of distant stars and galaxies become more precise, cosmologists are struggling to make sense of sparring values.

New Kind of Magnetism Spotted in an Engineered Material

January 10, 2024

In an atomically thin stack of semiconductors, a mechanism unseen in any natural substance causes electrons’ spins to align.

The Year in Physics

December 21, 2023

From the smallest scales to the largest, the physical world provided no shortage of surprises this year.

New Clues for What Will Happen When the Sun Eats the Earth

December 20, 2023

Recent observations of an aging, alien planetary system are helping to answer the question: What will happen to our planet when the sun dies?

Extra-Long Blasts Challenge Our Theories of Cosmic Cataclysms

December 11, 2023

Astronomers thought they had solved the mystery of gamma-ray bursts. A few recent events suggest otherwise.

The (Often) Overlooked Experiment That Revealed the Quantum World

December 5, 2023

A century ago, the Stern-Gerlach experiment established the truth of quantum mechanics. Now it’s being used to probe the clash of quantum theory and gravity.

A Century Later, New Math Smooths Out General Relativity

November 30, 2023

Mathematicians prove a theorem that illuminates the geometry of universes with tiny amounts of mass.

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