Using sheets of light to corral waves of ultracold atoms, researchers have created an experimental platform for studying the event horizons of black holes. Making waves. Researchers have created a ...

Researchers have used radio observations of rapidly spinning neutron stars to search for signals from supermassive black hole pairs at the dawn of galaxy formation. In our lifetimes, an amazing thing ...

The creation of modern quantum mechanics was a messy business in which many of the participants did not grasp the significance of their own discoveries. The wave nature of electrons is revealed in ...

Gravitational waves emitted by the merger of two black holes have been detected, setting the course for a new era of observational astrophysics. Figure 1: Numerical simulations of the gravitational ...

The Parker Solar Probe has flown through the Sun’s atmosphere—an unforgiving environment that poses a number of engineering challenges. An artist’s illustration of the Parker Solar Probe getting up ...

In 1935, Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen (EPR) wrote a now famous paper questioning the completeness of the formalism of quantum mechanics. Rejecting the idea that a measurement on ...

The new JWST observatory is revealing far more bright galaxies in the early Universe than anyone predicted, and astrophysicists have more than one explanation for the puzzle. With the JWST observatory ...

A theoretical approach called naturalness has helped physicists understand several particle physics puzzles—but the Higgs boson’s unsuitably small mass is currently foiling this strategy. Particle ...

The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics says that a measurement can cause a splitting of reality into separate worlds. The quantum-mechanics interpretation that suggests that new universes ...

The no-hair theorem was originally formulated to describe isolated black holes, but an extended version now describes the more realistic case of a black hole distorted by nearby matter. However, this ...

A theory for rogue waves based on instantons—a mathematical concept developed in quantum chromodynamics—has been successfully tested in controlled laboratory experiments. The reliable recording of ...

The discovery of an isotope, rutherfordium-252, whose ground state forestalls fission for just 60 nanoseconds, could help theorists understand the cosmic synthesis of superheavy elements. In 1991 an ...