Natalie Wolchover
Deathblow Dealt to Dark Matter Disks
New data tracking the movements of millions of Milky Way stars have effectively ruled out the presence of a “dark disk” that could have offered important clues to the mystery of dark matter.
LIGO Architects Win Nobel Prize in Physics
The American physicists Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Barry Barish were honored for dreaming up and realizing the experiment that confirmed the existence of gravitational waves.
Marjorie Rice’s Secret Pentagons
A California housewife who in the 1970s discovered four new types of tessellating pentagons is dead at 94.
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.
Latest Black Hole Collision Comes With a Twist
The Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory’s third detection further compounds the mystery of why black holes collide.
Physicists Attack Math’s $1,000,000 Question
Physicists are attempting to map the distribution of the prime numbers to the energy levels of a particular quantum system.
Yves Meyer, Wavelet Expert, Wins Abel Prize
The French mathematician was cited “for his pivotal role in the development of the mathematical theory of wavelets.”
Droplets That “Come to Life”
Life might have originated in droplets that behave surprisingly like living cells.
Quantum Gravity’s Time Problem
The effort to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity means reconciling totally different notions of time.
A Quasicrystal’s Shocking Origin
By blasting a stack of minerals with a four-meter-long gun, scientists have found a new clue about the backstory of a very strange rock.
