Browse Physics

Invisible sheetlike structures, which might pervade space and contribute to dark matter or dark energy, could be revealed as they pass by Earth-based detectors.

Theorists predict that the matter surrounding some black holes may be hot enough for nuclear fusion, which could generate lithium and deepen the mysteries surrounding lithium in the universe.

The idea of inflation–an exponential expansion of the universe in its first moments–was published in 1981, in a paper that imported new ideas from particle physics into theoretical cosmology.

LISA, a future gravitational wave detector, could find evidence that the early universe had fewer than three spatial dimensions.

Theorists propose that a nanostructured material could show what happens when the structure of spacetime changes, as some cosmologists have suggested may have occurred in the early universe.

Relic neutrinos from the big bang have come from a region of the universe much nearer than the famous cosmic microwaves, even though they are older.

A single neutrino left over from the big bang may have a quantum wave (wave function) that stretches across the universe.

The cosmic microwave background that fills the Universe provides a test for asymmetries in the laws of physics.

Researchers used a superconducting structure to measure the properties of a rapid phase transition, as may have happened just after the big bang.

The puzzling origins of some isotopes in the solar system are explained by accounting for blasts of antineutrinos in the first seconds of a supernova.

A 1948 paper used general relativity to provide the first quantitative description of the first moments after the big bang.

New astronomical observations contradict the claim that fundamental constants were different in the early universe.

Computer simulations support the controversial theory that the magnetic fields enveloping galaxies are as old as the Universe.

Any object in motion feels a bit of friction as it moves through the sea of radiation that is constantly emitted by its surroundings.

Dark matter arising from extra spatial dimensions could be detected with existing or future experiments.

The 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics went to three experimentalists who opened the window on cosmic neutrinos and x rays.

The mysterious magnetic fields that seem to permeate the cosmos may come from simple physics.

Treating the Universe as a hologram might solve one of the biggest problems bedeviling modern physics.

A set of just three parameters will allow cosmologists to compare all of their dark energy theories with the data.

Spectra from distant quasars imply that a fundamental physical constant may have been increasing slightly over the past six billion years.