theoretical physics

Intriguingly, this kind of decoherence will occur anywhere there is a horizon that only allows information to travel in one direction, creating the potential for causality paradoxes. The…

Physicists don’t think the truth should be “out there.” They want nature to come naturally, make sense, fit in or have a good reason not to.Unnaturalness is a problem. The poster child for…

Most of the quantum fields that fill our universe have one, and only one, preferred state, in which they’ll remain for eternity. Most, but not all.True and False VacuumsIn the 1970s,…

In 1963, the mathematician Roy Kerr found a solution to Einstein’s equations that precisely described the spacetime outside what we now call a rotating black hole. (The term wouldn’t be…

FP ExplainersMay 13, 2022 16:45:27 ISTFor the first time, astronomers have captured an image of the supermassive black hole or SMBH, at the centre of our galaxy. It's the first direct…

Physicists have found that an elementary particle called the W boson appears to be 0.1 percent too heavy—a tiny discrepancy that could foreshadow a huge shift in fundamental physics.The…

Even the strongest gravitational waves that pass through the planet, created by the distant collisions of black holes, only stretch and compress each mile of Earth’s surface by…

In 1999, a trio of cinematic mindfucks—The Thirteenth Floor, eXistenZ, and, of course, The Matrix—came out, all illustrating the possibility of unreal realities and thus fulfilling condition…

A group of scientists may have stumbled upon a radical new way to do cosmology.Cosmologists usually determine the composition of the universe by observing as much of it as possible. But…

We’ve known about gravity since Newton’s apocryphal encounter with the apple, but we’re still struggling to make sense of it. While the other three forces of nature are all due to the…