Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog.Experimenters in Germany have glimpsed the kind of strange, non-atomic matter thought to fill the cores of merging…

The members of the physics institute at Via Panisperna were in the habit of giving themselves jocular nicknames: Enrico Fermi was “The Pope,” Orso Corbino was “God the Almighty,”…

Fifty years ago, in the Oval Office, Richard Nixon made what he called the “most historic phone call ever.” Houston had put him through to the men on the moon. “It’s a great…

Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog.Imagine if all our scientific theories and models told us only about averages: if the best weather forecasts…

I’ve been talking to Jerome Cardano for years now. What’s more, he talks back to me—in a voice that often drips with gentle mockery. He clearly thinks my sanity is as precarious…

Leading off this week’s chapter of Nautilus, physics writer Michael Brooks carries on a playful, imaginary conversation with Jerome Cardano, a crazy-bold 16th-century scientist,…

Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog.Astronomers have discovered a complex planetary system still swirling into existence.Photograph by ESO / A. Müller…

Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog.A strange glow coming from the Milky Way’s center was thought to be due to ordinary pulsars. But a new look at…

It’s striking that water can illustrate and elucidate a martial arts philosophy while also being, to this day, the “least understood material on Earth,” as researchers reported…

In his book Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality, Max Tegmark writes that “time is not an illusion, but the flow of time is.” In this month’s…