PBS
Does Axionic Dark Matter Bind Galaxies Together?
New ReviewQuantum mechanics is our best theory of the fundamental nature of reality, but it's usually only distinguishable from familiar classical mechanics on the smallest scales. But it’s also possible that our entire galaxy is filled with a...
PBS
Do We Need a New Dark Matter Model?
New ReviewWe have no idea what dark matter is, other than it’s some source of gravity that is completely invisible but exerts way more pull that all of the regular matter. More than all of the stars, all of the gas, all of the black holes…unless...
PBS
What If Space is Not Empty?
New ReviewSpacetime on its smallest scales is a seething ocean of black holes and wormholes flickering into and out of existence—or so many physicists think has to be the case. But why should we take this spacetime foam seriously if we’ve never...
PBS
What New Science Would We Discover with a Moon Telescope?
New ReviewIn order to see the faint light from objects in deepest space, astronomers go to the darkest places on the planet. In order to listen to their quite radio signals, they head as far from any radio-noisy humans as possible. But there’s...
PBS
Are Many Worlds and Pilot Wave The Same Theory?
New ReviewIt’s hard to interpret the strange results of quantum mechanics, though many have tried. Interpretations range from the outlandish—like the multiple universes of Many Worlds, to the almost mundane, like the very mechanical Pilot Wave...
PBS
What If There's A Black Hole Inside The Sun? (Hawking Stars)
New ReviewA fun nightmare sci-fi scenario is the sun being consumed by a black hole. Fortunately the chance of a black hole randomly wandering into our solar system is pretty tiny. That’s good news. But what if it’s already here, hiding in the...
PBS
What if Singularities Do Not Exist?
New ReviewIt's not too often that a giant of physics threatens to overturn an idea held to be self-evident by generations of physicists. Well, that may be the fate of the famous Penrose Singularity Theorem if we're to believe a recent paper by Roy...
PBS
What Happens If We Nuke Space?
New ReviewEMPs aren’t science fiction. Real militaries are experimenting on real EMP generators, and as Starfish Prime showed us, space nukes can send powerful EMPs to the surface. So what exactly is an EMP, and how dangerous are they?
PBS
Dark Forest: Should We Not Contact Aliens?
New ReviewIn 1974 we sent the Arecibo radio message towards Messier 13, a globular cluster near the edge of the Milky Way, made up of a few hundred thousand stars. The message was mostly symbolic; we weren’t really expecting a reply. Yet surely...
PBS
Does Space Emerge From A Holographic Boundary?
New ReviewSpace seems fundamental. To build a universe, surely you need something to build it on or in. Many, maybe most physicists now think that the fabric of space emerges from something deeper. And perhaps the most existentially disturbing...
PBS
What If Gravity is Not A Fundamental Force?
New ReviewThere are four fundamental forces - the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism, and gravity. Except maybe gravity is no more fundamental than the force of a stretched elastic band. Maybe gravity is just an entropic byproduct—an...
PBS
How Eclipses Revealed Our Solar System
New ReviewOf all the astronomical phenomena you can witness, the total solar eclipse has to be the most visceral--the most in-your-face reminder that our reality consists of giant balls of rock spinning around stars. It's also the eclipse and...
PBS
What Supernova Distance Would Trigger Mass Extinction?
New ReviewThe deaths of massive stars results in one of the most beautiful and violent events in the universe: the supernova. But if these explosions occur too close to Earth their radiation can impact life and even trigger mass extinctions.
PBS
Did AI Prove Our Proton Model Wrong?
New ReviewThe humble proton may seem simple enough, and they’re certainly common. And protons are each made of three up or down quarks. Simple stuff, right? All except for that last part. Protons are actually made of many, many quarks that happen...
PBS
What If The Speed of Light is Not Constant?
New ReviewOne of the most fundamental physics facts is that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant for all observers. But can we really be sure that the speed of light wasn’t different in the past, or perhaps in other parts of the universe? In...
PBS
JWST Discovered The Farthest Star Ever Seen!
New ReviewTo understand where we came from—how earth, the solar system, the galaxy became what they are today—we need to understand the beginning of time. For example, how did the first galaxies pull themselves together from the dark...
PBS
How Will We (Most Likely) Discover Alien Life?
New ReviewThe first discovery of extraterrestrial life will almost certainly NOT be when it visits us, nor when we visit it. It won’t be when we see it’s stray TV signals. It’ll be in the excruciatingly faint changes in the color of alien sunsets...
PBS
What If Gravity is Not Quantum?
New ReviewThe holy grail of theoretical physics is to come up with a quantum theory of gravity. But after a century of trying we really have no idea how close we are, or it it's even possible. But we shouldn't feel bad because it turns out that...
PBS
Does Antimatter Create Anti-Gravity?
New ReviewFrom hoverboards to flying cars to cloud cities, anti-gravity is a staple of science fiction and our dream of a less Earth-bound future. But in the real universe gravity appears to be a purely attractive force. Feels like its main MO is...
PBS
Did JWST Solve The Mystery of Supermassive Black Hole Origins?
New ReviewThis is what we astronomers call a blob, or a smudge, if you want to get really technical. It may not look like much from here, but what do you expect for something near the literal edge of the observable universe. If you were there when...
PBS
What’s The Universe’s Strongest Particle Accelerator?
New ReviewCern's Large Hadron Collider routinely collides particles at energies equivalent to a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. If this worries you, then the following fact will either put you at ease or scare the hell out of you. And...
PBS
Will The Sun’s Magnetic Field Flip This Year?
New ReviewSolar activity is still increasing in a sunspot cycle that is proving way more intense than scientists predicted. Just how much stronger is it going to get?
PBS
Can We Test Quantum Gravity?
New ReviewIf we discover how to connect quantum mechanics with general relativity we’ll pretty much win physics. There are multiple theories that claim to do this, but it’s notoriously difficult to test them. They seem to require absurd...
PBS
What If the Cosmological Constant Is Not Constant?
New ReviewWe know that the universe is getting bigger. And we know that the speed that the universe is getting bigger is also getting bigger. The standard assumption is that the acceleration rate is itself constant, which will surely result in...