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Maciej Rebisz Three Physicists Stumbled Upon a Striking Mathematical Discovery
Describing neutrino oscillations is notoriously tricky. The search for a shortcut led to unexpected places.
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Olena Shamlhalo / Quanta Rumors Are Swirling Around a Black-Hole Discovery
The object might be as massive as 100 suns—if it even exists.
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Patryk Hardziej / Quanta Magazine The Dispute at the Heart of Cosmology
The universe is expanding, but no one can agree on exactly how fast.
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wavegrower What Keeps Black Holes From Expanding Everywhere?
Black holes are somehow able to grow constantly without changing their size. Physics might finally be able to explain why.
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Boris Vaudran A Break in the Quest for the Quantum Speed Limit
“When you see that, you know you’re touching on something very, very deep and fundamental.”
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Julia Gunther / Olena Shmahalo / Quanta Magazine There May Be More Worlds With Water Than We Think
H2O is older than the sun, and could play a key role in helping planets grow.
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Niels Busch / Quanta Magazine An Experimental Boost for Quantum Weirdness
After a century of debate, an alternative theory that favored classical reality has finally met its ruin.
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Ognen Teofilovski / Reuters Do or Die for the Leading Big Bang Theory
A new analysis could put the question of cosmic expansion to rest once and for all.
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Rune Fisker / Quanta Magazine When Shadows Are Not What They Seem
By picking up on patterns too subtle for humans to notice, non-line-of-sight imaging can see around corners and through walls.
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Maciej Rebisz / Quanta Magazine The Universe as We Understand It May Be Impossible
A new conjecture in physics challenges the leading “theory of everything.”
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NASA / JPL–Caltech / GSFC / JAXA Astronomers Can’t Decide What the Sun Is Made Of
The concentration of metals in our star will determine when it dies, but scientists struggle to settle on an estimate.
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Photographer: Kiliii Yüyan / Art Director: Olena Shmahalo In the Garden of an Alien Hunter
When Victoria Meadows needs to ponder life on distant planets, she surrounds herself with earthly vegetation.
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ESA / Gaia / DPAC Galactic Archaeologists Begin Sifting Through Newly Illuminated Stars
The Milky Way's deep past is beginning to come into view.
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Olena Shmahalo / Quanta Magazine Doubt Surrounds the Only Experiment That Claims to See Dark-Matter Particles
For two decades, one research team has detected collisions between dark and ordinary matter—but no one else can replicate their findings.
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Jessica Kourkounis / Quanta Magazine A Powerful New Weapon in the Fight Against Shoddy Statistics
Using the wrong method to analyze a data set can yield misleading results. So one researcher is championing an approach that works for nearly everything.
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Lucy Reading-Ikkanda / Quanta Magazine Why Does the Universe Need to Be So Empty?
Physicists have long grappled with the perplexingly small weight of empty space.
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Olena Shmahalo / Quanta Magazine Physicists Found a Trick to Solve an ‘Impossible’ Puzzle of Gravity
The experiment would confirm that gravity is a quantum force.
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davidope / Quanta Magazine The Big Bang May Have Been One of Many
Our universe could be expanding and contracting eternally.
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Olena Shmahalo / Quanta Magazine A Mission to Classify Even the Weirdest Phases of Matter
Physicists are looking far beyond solids, liquids, and gases.
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Olena Shmahalo / Quanta Magazine The Best Explanation for Everything in the Universe
String theory is considered the leading “theory of everything,” but there’s still no empirical evidence for it.
