Thunderstorm Turns Into a Nuclear Reactor and Blasts Radiation Everywhere
Thunderclouds rolled into the Japanese beach town of Uchinada early one December morning in 2015. The scientists…
Physics
IBM Quantum Computer Does Record-Breaking Chemistry
As cool as they sound, quantum computers will probably not be best suited for designing websites or making pretty word…
Scientists Propose a New Kind of Quantum Computer, But What Does That Mean?
There are weeks where it seems like every piece of physics news mentions quantum computing—but we are nowhere near a…
Biggest X-Ray Laser Gun on Earth Opens in September
Even if you haven’t seen any James Bond films, you’re probably aware that the space laser battle depicted in Moonraker…
Scientists Bust Up Black Hole Theory Using World's Most Powerful X-Ray Machine
Should you find yourself inside a black hole, you will die. Should you find yourself near a black hole, you will also…
Scientists Finally Prove Strange Quantum Physics Idea Einstein Hated
The equations of physics are things that we humans created to understand the Universe, and it can be hard to…
Wild Theory Suggests Heavy Metals Came From Parasitic Black Holes
If you were to rank the wildest things in the universe, there are a few obvious contenders: gamma rays, fast radio…
Groundbreaking Observation Confirms an Important Prediction of Quantum Physics
Particle accelerators have a lot of important jobs, like looking for new stuff by slamming beams of old stuff together.…
Physicists Prove 40-Year-Old Prediction With Incredible Neutrino Observation
Physicists make a lot of statements about stuff they hope will happen, but might not happen in their lifetimes. One…
New Analysis at Nuclear Reactor Reignites Search for Mysterious 'Sterile' Neutrino
You’re probably aware that stuff is made from particles. But the second most abundant particle in the universe, the…
Incredible Video Reveals that Rainbows Actually Go All the Way Around
It turns out the recognizable half-circle arch of a rainbow is a complete lie. When you’re standing on the ground…
Basic Assumptions of Physics Might Require the Future to Influence the Past
One of the most well-accepted physical theories makes no logical sense. Quantum mechanics, the theory that governs the…
Guy Who Wrote That 'You and I Collide' Song Sings Parody About the Large Hadron Collider
There are lots of secret fans of particle physics. My favorite tweets of all time, for example, are ex-baseball player…
Controversial New Gravitational Waves Paper Shows Science Happening In Real Time [Updated]
If you know science, you know it’s not perfect. Outside eyes review papers their peers wrote before those papers get…
The Hunt for Gravitational Waves Is Officially Headed to Space
It took around a hundred years between Albert Einstein crafting his theory of general relativity and the confirmation…
Experiment With Chinese Satellite Demonstrates Quantum Weirdness Over Record Distances
Quantum mechanics is weird as hell, where the rules of the world you experience don’t apply. Even at distances a…
Scientists Weigh a Star Using Gravity, Proving Einstein Wrong by Proving Him Right
Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity, called general relativity, is probably the best physics theory ever formulated. It…
Scientists Reignite Thirty-Year-Old Debate About Glass With New Calculation
Mathematics is far more fraught with debate and disagreement than you might imagine. Arguments about things some of the…
Physicists Just Spotted Gravitational Waves Again—So What's Next?
A long, long time ago, a pair of black holes collided with such power that they created ripples in spacetime, which…
