Science

The quantum world has a lot in common with shoes. You can’t just go to a shop and pick out sneakers that are an exact match for your feet. Instead, you’re forced to choose between pairs that come in predetermined sizes. The subatomic world is similar.

A new star map reveals more than 2,000 stars, some with their own planets, that have a direct view of our planetary presence.

A new study claims networks of observers are responsible for determining physical reality.The scientists propose that observers generate the structures of time and space.The paper could help yield insights into the God Equation, which attempts to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity.

Boltysh crater in Ukraine formed around the same time as the Chicxulub event, raising questions about its role in this tumultuous era. Some 65 million years ago, a rock from outer space slammed into Earth, wreaking havoc on life in its wake and leaving a large crater on our planet’s surface.

Wars in space will never be like Star Wars. “Starfighters” will not engage in dogfights with unlimited maneuverability and range. An actual conflict in space would be slow and deliberate, requiring prepositioning of weapons and meticulous planning.

Afleet of robot spaceships is to descend on Venus in a few years and begin probing the most inhospitable world in the solar system.

For Erik Lentz, it all started with Star Trek. Every few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Jean-Luc Picard would raise his hand and order, “Warp one, engage!” Then stars became dashes, and light-years flashed by at impossible speed.

The theoretical physicist Andrei Linde may have the world’s most expansive conception of what infinity looks like.

A new thought experiment indicates that quantum mechanics doesn’t work without strange numbers that turn negative when squared.

One of the most important open questions in science is how our consciousness is established. In the 1990s, long before winning the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for his prediction of black holes, physicist Roger Penrose teamed up with anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff to propose an ambitious answer.

Quantum physicist Mario Krenn remembers sitting in a café in Vienna in early 2016, poring over computer printouts, trying to make sense of what MELVIN had found. MELVIN was a machine-learning algorithm Krenn had built, a kind of artificial intelligence.

Every coast in the U.S. is facing rapidly increasing high tide floods. NASA says this is due to a "wobble" in the moon's orbit working in tandem with climate change-fueled rising sea levels.

Let's start by saying the Universe is big. When we look in any direction, the furthest visible regions of the Universe are estimated to be around 46 billion light years away. That's a diameter of 540 sextillion (or 54 followed by 22 zeros) miles.

Theorists are in a frenzy over “fractons,” bizarre, but potentially useful, hypothetical particles that can only move in combination with one another. Your desk is made up of individual, distinct atoms, but from far away its surface appears smooth.

The death of the dinosaurs was just one of five global events that saw millions of species wiped out. How do these events happen? And how can we stop it happening again?