Browsing: Physics

The pressure it takes to break everything from raindrops to stars.

If our particles have no identity, how can we?

Portable slow-light technology could measure the speed of glaciers in real time.

When our Universe was in its infancy, the only element it contained was hydrogen, the simplest one—not nearly enough by itself to create interesting things like planets and people. By the time things cooled sufficiently for the single proton in each hydrogen atom to pair with a negatively charged electron, about 92 percent of […]

Isaac Newton spurned social contact but also relied on it for his greatest work.

The Princeton physicist on what’s wrong with inflation theory and his view of the Big Bang.

Nautilus’ Ingenious this month, Alan Lightman, is a successful writer and physicist, and one of the very rare people to receive an appointment in both science and humanities at MIT*. He did his doctoral research at Caltech while Richard Feynman was a professor there. One day, Lightman was on hand to see the brilliant and […]

How is it possible to get something from nothing?

To understand turbulence we need the intuitive perspective of art.

The high stakes of solving one of science’s most obstinate problems.