Darren Whittingham/Shutterstock
In trying to solve the ultimate problem, we may have inadvertently created a monster.
An illustration of a supermassive black hole.
NASA/JPL
Studying theoretical, fast-spinning black holes is helping physicists understand more about the elusive black holes out in the universe.
Surface bubble growth can lift objects upward against gravity.
Saverio Spagnolie
Want to bring extra life to a glass of champagne or soda water? Physicists will tell you to drop in a small object, such as a berry or raisin.
IceCube sits on tons of clear ice, allowing scientists to make out neutrino interactions.
Cmichel67/Wikimedia Commons
Tau neutrinos are notoriously difficult to spot in detectors like IceCube. But researchers have managed to isolate 7 candidates.
D-Visions / Shutterstock
The US, Europe and China are all planning particle colliders that would study the Higgs boson.
Willyam Bradberry/Shutterstock
Maritime folklore is awash with tall tales of monstrous waves. A new study gets closer to understanding where they come from and how to predict them.
When it was time for the 2013 Nobel prize in physics to be announced, Peter Higgs went fishing.
Andy Rain/EPA Images
During a walk in the Scottish Highlands, one of the greats of particle physics had the idea of a lifetime
The Baltimore bridge didn’t stand a chance.
AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson
A civil engineer lays out the physics behind Dali’s crash into the Francis Scott Key Bridge pier.
Buradaki / Shutterstock
Textbooks often show Earth’s orbit around the Sun as an almost egg-shaped ellipse. The real story is very different.
Bartlomiej K. Wroblewski / Shutterstock
Quantum computing has huge promise from a technical perspective, but the practical benefits are less clear.
How can we explain the paradox of a matter that can be sticky and slippery?
Martin Robles/Unsplash
How can the same material, ice, have diametrically different physical properties - sticking and sliding?
U.S. airlines carry more than 800 million passengers per year.
Lasha Kilasonia/iStock via Getty Images Plus
People have been flying airplanes for well over a century. Engineers know how to balance all the forces at play, but still aren’t exactly sure how some of the physics of flight actually works.
Shutterstock
A new measurement of gravity at small scales hints at an alternative to billion-dollar experiments for the future of physics.
Low-level blasts can cause physical changes in the brain.
Libkos/AP Photo
The people manning the guns are also at risk of injury from the force of the weapon.
Limbless robots may not need lots of complex algorithms when they have mechanical intelligence.
Tianyu Wang
Robots often have a hard time navigating through debris, but robots designed based on worms and snakes could move around obstacles faster, thanks to an idea called mechanical intelligence.
Condensation and cold combine to create that layer of ice on car windshields in winter.
Tomasz Sienicki/Wikimedia Commons
When you’re running late in the winter, you don’t want to have to spend time scraping frost off your windshield. Try some expert-recommended techniques instead.
You may hardly feel a raindrop, but for some tiny insects, one drop can have an intense impact.
Mendowong Photography/Moment via Getty Images
Microplastic pollution is a growing problem − one lab is looking at tiny insects as inspiration for how these pollutants might move through water.
Dragonfire laser system test firing.
UK Ministry of Defence/wikipedia
Operating the DragonFire laser system for ten seconds costs the equivalent of using a heater for an hour (less than £10 per shot).
ESB Professional / Shutterstock
Human behaviour is often irrational if viewed through the lens of “classical” physics and probability theory.
Fingerprints have been used as unique identifiers for decades.
AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
Using fingerprints to catch criminals isn’t 100% accurate, but analyzing fingerprints in 3D, rather than 2D, could improve the process.