Physics

A new theory explains the seemingly irreversible arrow of time while yielding insights into entropy, quantum computers, black holes, and the past-future divide.

Support is growing for a decades-old physics idea suggesting that localized episodes of disordered brain activity help keep the overall system in healthy balance.

A conversation with the mathematical physicist Freeman Dyson on quantum electrodynamics, climate change and his latest pet project.

Scientists report the possible discovery of primordial gravitational waves, ripples in space-time that carry a record of how the universe began.

New calculations suggest physicists may someday discover a fundamental theory of gravity, but it could require a radical new perspective on the universe.

A new analysis strengthens the case that gamma rays emanating from the center of the Milky Way come from dark matter particles known as WIMPs.

A daring speculation offers a potential way forward in one of the great unsolved problems of mathematics: the behavior of the Navier-Stokes equations for fluid flow.

With a new approach that treats the universe as a fluid, cosmologists plan to tease out the fine details of the Big Bang from its behavior and evolution.

An MIT physicist has proposed the provocative idea that life exists because the law of increasing entropy drives matter to acquire lifelike physical properties.