Einstein's theory of gravity, general relativity, has passed all tests with predictions that are spot-on. One prediction that remains is "gravitational wave memory"—the prediction that a passing gravitational wave will ...
Extraterrestrial civilizations need a great deal of energy as they advance up the Kardashev scale. Fossil fuels are finite, wind and solar energy are carbon free but not as efficient as fossil fuels, and traditional nuclear ...
As physicists continue their struggle to find and explain the origin of dark matter, the approximately 80% of the matter in the universe that we can't see and so far haven't been able to detect, researchers have now proposed ...
After almost a century of speculation, proposals and searches for dark matter, physicists now know that it currently comprises about 27% of the universe's mass-energy, with an abundance over five times that of ordinary matter ...
Like Earth, Mars was formed about 4.5 billion years ago, but its early surface was very different than today's. Mars' surface then had high rates of meteorite and asteroid impacts from the period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment. ...
How would atoms behave near a supermassive object? We know how atoms behave in extremely weak gravity like that at the Earth's surface: They can be excited from a lower energy level to a higher one when an electron absorbs ...
Enrico Fermi's lunchtime question at wartime Los Alamos, "Where is everybody?" has been both a gift and a problem to scientists ever since. Known as "Fermi's Paradox," it simply asks, why, since life on Earth is ubiquitous ...
How accurate are past records of sunspots? In a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal, a team of multinational researchers examined the historical record and found that after the unusual period of almost no sunspots, ...
While roboticists have developed increasingly sophisticated systems over the past decades, ensuring that these systems can autonomously operate in real-world settings without mishaps often proves challenging. This is particularly ...
A new study in Physical Review Letters explores the conditions of black hole formation from dying stars, particularly the role of neutrino-induced natal kicks in the formation process.
