Physics
440 articles-
What Is Scientific Discovery Worth?
The quest to detect neutrinos has physicists—and society—asking hard questions.
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Original Minds
From the first cells to unique minds, in the editor’s note from Print Issue 46.
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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Uncertainty
I now realize Heisenberg and Schrödinger are less like physicists and more like therapists.
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They Probed Quantum Entanglement While Everyone Shrugged
This year’s winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics were driven by curiosity, skill, and tenacity.
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Are We Getting the Real Stuff in Popular Science?
When it comes to physics, says Sean Carroll, you need the math.
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Lose Weight the Slow and Incredibly Difficult Way
Trying to answer a silly question can take you through some serious science.
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How the Physics of Nothing Underlies Everything
The key to understanding the origin and fate of the universe may be a more complete understanding of the vacuum.
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We Might Already Speak the Same Language As ET
Alien communication could utilize quantum physics, so SETI needs a new way to listen.
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Computer Science Proof Unveils Unexpected Form of Entanglement
Three computer scientists have posted a proof of the NLTS conjecture, showing that systems of entangled particles can remain difficult to analyze even away from extremes.
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Why We Need to Study Nothing
The origins of the universe may be hidden in the voids of space.
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Thinking Like a Scientist Will Make You Happier
Physicist Jim Al-Khalili explains how to get out from under the cloud of misinformation.
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Doctor Strange and the Multiverse in Science
The multiverse of pop culture owes its existence to a testable scientific hypothesis.
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As Creation Stories Go, the Big Bang Is a Good One
How science is like mythology when it pushes the boundaries of the known.
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I Just Want to Know What I’m Made Of
It’s time to admit quantum theory has reached a dead end. Can we please go back to the math?
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How the Physics of Resonance Shapes Reality
The same phenomenon by which an opera singer can shatter a wineglass also underlies the very existence of subatomic particles.
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My Dad Once Told Me the World Was 100 Years Old
His teasing provoked me to understand the origins of time.
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An Injection of Chaos Solves Decades-Old Fluid Mystery
In the 1960s, drillers noticed that certain fluids would firm up if they flowed too fast. Researchers have finally explained why.
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Detailed Footage Finally Reveals What Triggers Lightning
Scientists have never been able to adequately explain where lightning comes from. Now the first detailed observations of its emergence inside a cloud have exposed how electric fields grow strong enough to let bolts fly.
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The Country Gentleman of Physics
Julian Barbour’s ideas about time and the universe have always roamed free of academia.