Did 'dark matter' or a star called Nemesis kill the dinosaurs?

The dinosaur extinction 66m years ago was most likely caused by a comet or big asteroid hitting the Earth. But given that asteroids don't actually hit our planet very often, could this really be the whole story? Many scientists ...

SLAC theorist explains quantum gravity

Our world is ruled by four fundamental forces: the gravitational pull of massive objects, the electromagnetic interaction between electric charges, the strong nuclear interaction holding atomic nuclei together and the weak ...

Explainer: What is mass?

When it comes to electrons, Higgs bosons or photons, they don't have much going for them. They possess spin, charge, mass and … that's about it.

May the fifth force be with you

Discovering possible new forces in nature is no mean task. The discovery of gravity linked to Newton's arguably apocryphal apple experiment has remained anchored in popular culture. In January 1986, Ephraim Fischbach, Physics ...

Image: LISA Pathfinder electrode housing box

This photo, suggestive of an old-fashioned lift cage, in fact shows inside a much smaller enclosure: one of the electrode housing boxes that will fly on ESA's LISA Pathfinder mission, planned for launch later this year. The ...

Researchers detect possible signal from dark matter

Could there finally be tangible evidence for the existence of dark matter in the Universe? After sifting through reams of X-ray data, scientists in EPFL's Laboratory of Particle Physics and Cosmology (LPPC) and Leiden University ...

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