Physics

Huge Gravitational Waves Discovery Gets the Nobel Prize It Deserves

The Nobel Prizes are important and all. But if you’ve been paying attention to physics for the past two years, this year’s prize is akin to saying “my beautiful dog has won the Good Boy prize.” We’re very excited, but we aren’t surprised. Today, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2017 Nobel…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Oct 3

Scientists Just Made the First Super-Secure Quantum Video Call

A “quantum satellite” sounds at home in the James Bond franchise, but there really is a satellite named Micius with some truly quantum assignments. In this case, it helped the president of the Chinese Academy of Science make a video call. A quantum-safe video call. The Micius satellite has made the news several times this…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Sep 29

A New Gravitational Wave Detector Makes Its First Discovery

Arguably the most exciting recent development in astronomy was 2016’s announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves, waves that literally ripple the shape of space itself, created by violent events like black holes colliding. But every gravitational wave discovery had always been done with only two detectors, meaning that scientists only knew what caused the…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Sep 27

Scientists Resolve Mysterious Violation to Einstein’s Relativity

Even if you don’t know much physics, you probably know one of its core tenets: an object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion. In fact, in a vacuum where there’s literally nothing to slow things down, things don’t prefer being at rest or in motion. This plays out…

Tech News Ryan F. Mandelbaum Sep 22

Mysterious Deep Space Radio Bursts May Be Surprisingly Common

Since their discovery in 2002, scientists have struggled to understand Fast Radio bursts—high-energy pulses that originate from galaxies billions of light-years away. Though only a handful of these radio blips have ever been detected, new research suggests they could be a ubiquitous fixture of the cosmos, flashing about once every second throughout the observable universe.…

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky Sep 22

Liquid Cats, Vagina Speakers and More From the Ig Nobel Prizes of 2017

Scientists spend their days hypothesizing, experimenting, and analyzing in order to find evidence to better understand our strange Universe. Sometimes, that requires playing the didgeridoo and then falling asleep. The Nobel Prize, the annual awards ceremony commemorating the most important advances in the sciences and humanities, is coming up soon. But last night came the…

Tech News Ryan F. Mandelbaum Sep 15

The Case of a Brain-Damaging ‘Sonic Weapon’ in Cuba Is Only Getting Stranger and Scarier

The baffling story of US diplomats in Cuba suffering hearing loss and brain damage in some sort of covert “health attack” just gets stranger and more terrifying with every new report. The Associated Press has learned that victims’ recollections and symptoms are even more varied and serious than we previously knew. https://gizmodo.com/diplomats-plagued-by-sonic-weapon-in-cuba-reported-to-s-1798359405 The AP spoke…

Tech News Rhett Jones Sep 14

Hubble Telescope Observes Goth Jupiter

Over a thousand light years away, there’s a planet that isn’t conforming to your so-called rules. It’s not one of the jocks like Earth, or one of the preps like Saturn. WASP-12b probably sits beneath the bleachers dressed in its black outfit with the checkered wristbands it bought from Hot Jupiter Topic, listening to The…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Sep 14

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 processors. Instead, their quirky bits may one day be used to solve special algorithms, for artificial intelligence applications, or to model things that actually follow the wild rules of quantum physics. One day. IBM scientists…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Sep 14

Why Has Our Sun Been Freaking Out So Much Lately?

Since early last week, the Sun has belched out a steady stream of solar flares, including the most powerful burst recorded in the star’s current 11-year cycle. It sounds very alarming, but scientists say this is simply what stars do every now and then, and that there’s nothing to be concerned about. Solar flares are…

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky Sep 12

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 quantum iPhone. You probably remember that computers can consist of billions of nanometer-scale transistors etched into silicon. Those chips used to be enormous, room-sized setups where instead of transistors, there were tubes the size of…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Sep 6

New Observations by NASA’s Juno Spacecraft Are Shaking Up Theories About Jupiter’s Auroras

Jupiter features the largest and most powerful auroral display in the Solar System. As spectacular as they are, however, very little is known about these dancing displays of Southern and Northern lights. A recent survey by NASA’s Juno spacecraft is providing new evidence about Jupiter’s auroras—and it’s becoming increasingly clear they’re not at all like…

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky Sep 6

Astronomers Think They Discovered The Missing Link in Black Hole Evolution

Science fiction doesn’t exist to make movies about the stuff we know about—it explores the unknown physics, astronomy, biology and chemistry where real uncertainty about topics can lead to compelling, believable stories. That’s what makes black holes such a popular subject; light can’t escape them, maybe they’re portals across space and time, and they seem…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Sep 4

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 ranks among the stupidest scenes in the franchise’s history. But there’s a new laser gun in town that’s actually good and opening up for business. It is not a weapon. The European X-ray Free Electron…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Aug 30

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 die. Aside from the fact that these massive, light-trapping monsters are impossible to reach on human timescales, there are simply not many ways to measure the plasma surrounding them without dying or destroying…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Aug 29

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 disentangle them from the Universe’s innate properties. It turns out that one of the weirdest things scientists have come up with, what Albert Einstein derisively called “spooky action at a distance,” is more than just…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Aug 25

Physicists Use Lasers to Set Up First Underwater Quantum Communications Link

Quantum mechanics may force you to think some wild things about the way the Universe works, but it has some real applications. One of the theory’s main quirks allows for a special kind of quantum link, one that can send incredibly secure messages or transmit data for quantum computing. Tests of these links exist on…

Tech News Ryan F. Mandelbaum Aug 23

Gravitational Waves Reveal the Unexpectedly Weird Behavior of Distant Black Holes

Last year’s gravitational wave discovery may have felt like the end of an era—a momentous occasion in which a precise experiment finally ended a hundred-year search to confirm a baffling prediction made by Albert Einstein. The discovery, instead, spawned an entirely new field of astronomy, and the results are finally starting to trickle in. And…

Tech News Ryan F. Mandelbaum Aug 23

Scientists Say It’s Raining Diamonds on Neptune and Uranus

Move over Jupiter and Saturn, a crap load of diamonds could be found in two of the most mysterious places in the Solar System: Uranus and Neptune. Researchers using the Linac Coherent Light Source at Stanford have demonstrated in the lab— with one of the brightest sources of X-rays on the planet—that the depths of…

Tech News Bryson Masse Aug 21

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 bursts, and quasars, for example. But no list would be complete without black holes and the black hole’s less-dense cousins, the neutron star. These hyper-compressed things can do some mind-boggling warping to the shape…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Aug 18

Huge Gravitational Waves Discovery Gets the Nobel Prize It Deserves

Scientists Just Made the First Super-Secure Quantum Video Call

A New Gravitational Wave Detector Makes Its First Discovery

Scientists Resolve Mysterious Violation to Einstein’s Relativity

Mysterious Deep Space Radio Bursts May Be Surprisingly Common

Liquid Cats, Vagina Speakers and More From the Ig Nobel Prizes of 2017

The Case of a Brain-Damaging ‘Sonic Weapon’ in Cuba Is Only Getting Stranger and Scarier

Hubble Telescope Observes Goth Jupiter

IBM Quantum Computer Does Record-Breaking Chemistry

Why Has Our Sun Been Freaking Out So Much Lately?

Scientists Propose a New Kind of Quantum Computer, But What Does That Mean?

New Observations by NASA’s Juno Spacecraft Are Shaking Up Theories About Jupiter’s Auroras

Astronomers Think They Discovered The Missing Link in Black Hole Evolution

Biggest X-Ray Laser Gun on Earth Opens in September

Scientists Bust Up Black Hole Theory Using World’s Most Powerful X-Ray Machine

Scientists Finally Prove Strange Quantum Physics Idea Einstein Hated

Physicists Use Lasers to Set Up First Underwater Quantum Communications Link

Gravitational Waves Reveal the Unexpectedly Weird Behavior of Distant Black Holes

Scientists Say It’s Raining Diamonds on Neptune and Uranus

Wild Theory Suggests Heavy Metals Came From Parasitic Black Holes

Gizmodo’s Favorite Photos From NASA’s Artemis 2 Mission

Lucasfilm Keeps Telling Authors Not to Bring Back Mara Jade

As Mass Drownings Add Up, Emperor Penguins Officially Join the Endangered List

OpenAI: Hey, We Also Have a New Tool That Is So Scarily Powerful We Can’t Release It

Razer’s Wireless Gaming Earbuds Are Back With Upgraded ANC

How ‘The Testaments’ Uses Voiceover to Add Layers to Its Characters

The Trump Regime Really Wants You to Know About Its Cool Secret Agent Gadgets

Artemis 2 Day 9: Follow the Mission With Our Live Updates 🔴

Asus Zenbook A16 Review: Start Considering Snapdragon on PC, for Real

Aqara Thermostat Hub W200 Review: Almost Better than My Ecobee

HP Omen Max 45L Review: 4K60 Gaming Has Never Been So Easy

Ecovacs Winbot W3 Omni Review: Window Cleaning Robots Have a Long Way to Go

AirPods Max 2 vs. Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (2nd Gen): Which ANC Headphones Win?

The Best Gadgets of March 2026

AirPods Max 2 Review: Still Ridiculously Expensive and Ridiculously Nice

DJI Osmo 360 Review: The Best 360 Camera for the DJI-Pilled

Let us help find what you are looking for...