Browse Physics

Cascades created by cosmic rays interacting with the atmosphere provide clues about the mass composition of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays.

New data are inconsistent with previous measurements that showed an unexpected excess of diffuse gamma-ray emission in the Galaxy.

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.

The Moon might be stranger than we think.

New connections have been made between experimental astrophysical signatures and theories that unify the electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces, called grand unified theories.

Detectors buried beneath the Antarctic ice place stringent limits on the presence of dark matter particles, called neutralinos, in the sun.

New results from the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope, the most precise to date in the energy range $20\text{GeV}$ to $1\text{TeV}$, should help resolve whether cosmic rays composed of the lightest charged particles, i.e., electrons and positrons, come from dark matter or some other astrophysical source.

Many cosmologists believe that antiprotons in cosmic rays come from the annihilation of dark matter. Data from the PAMELA experiment on board a Russian satellite provide an important test of this possibility.

New upper limits on the spin-independent interaction of WIMPs and nucleons marks the latest volley in the worldwide effort to detect and identify particle dark matter.

New arguments based on astrophysical phenomena constrain the possibility that dangerous black holes will be produced at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.

Forty years ago, it was predicted that there would be a sharp cutoff in the intensity of the very-high-energy cosmic rays that strike the earth’s surface. Two collaborations—the HiRes and Auger telescopes—are providing compelling evidence for this so-called “GZK effect.”

A supernova simulated using state-of-the-art equations doesn’t explode, exposing astrophysicists’ ignorance about neutrino physics.

Bare quark stars may give off a unique signal that could soon be detected.

The clustering of galaxies in space places the tightest bound yet on the mass of the wispy neutrino.

Neutrino observatories may be able to detect exotic matter in proto-neutron stars or witness the births of black holes.