Browse Physics

The first results from the space-borne Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer confirm an unexplained excess of high-energy positrons in Earth-bound cosmic rays.

Much can be learned about hypothetical particles called axions by studying the evolution of massive stars.

A laboratory analog of solar plasma offers a new tool in the search for the origin of coronal heating.

Experimental measurements with an x-ray laser test models of how ions behave in plasmas, like those found in stars and laser fusion research.

Observations of the way light scatters from large astrophysical bodies provides independent confirmation of the standard model of cosmology.

Observation of shallow water motion provides a remarkably good way to simulate the shock wave instabilities that occur in exploding stars.

New scattering experiments provide evidence for the long-suspected existence of an excited rotational state in carbon-$12$, related to a state that’s crucial in stellar fusion reactions.

Gravitational lensing distorts maps of the cosmic microwave background, providing yet another way of probing the matter and energy content of the universe.

On the largest distance scales, the distribution of galaxies appears to be clumpier than the standard cosmological model predicts.

Nearly fifty years after its inception, the Gravity Probe B satellite mission delivers the first measurements of how a spinning gyroscope precesses in the gravitational warping of spacetime.

New mass measurements of proton-rich nuclei will allow scientists to more accurately simulate the nucleosynthesis that occurs on the surface of neutron stars.

The rapid cooling of a neutron star signals a superfluid at its core.

A set of proposed relations among observable quantities may allow strong tests of whether a rapid expansion of the very early universe produced the seeds of the large-scale structure we see today.

A comparison between the density in surrounding galaxies today and a few billion years ago provides a new upper bound on neutrino mass.

New calculation of quark matter properties tells us what an exotic quark-neutron star might look like.

New calculations of the effects of asymmetry in numbers of neutrons and protons in nuclei agree well with experiment and provide vital information in understanding nuclear matter at low density.

New simulations of merging binary neutron stars include details of the gravitational wave signature that should in coming years help us understand another mysterious process—short gamma-ray bursts.

Ab initio simulations account for the peculiar abundance characteristics of noble gases in Jupiter

New measurements with the Fermi Large Area Telescope extend our knowledge of the extragalactic diffuse gamma-ray background and may help resolve the question of its origins.

The insights of a provocative connection between general relativity and quantum field theory, called the AdS/CFT correspondence, have been extended to rotating black holes that can occur astrophysically.