Physics is supposed to be predictable. Drop a ball, and gravity pulls it down. Heat water, and it boils. Light travels in straight lines. Yet throughout history, scientists have encountered ...

Research means asking questions of the universe. For centuries, clever minds have advanced science by devising ingenious ...

No one can question the impact of science on human civilization, and the importance of experimentation in science is equally undeniable. Some experiments confirm what we already know, others suggest a ...

For most stars, neutron stars and black holes are their final resting places. When a supergiant star runs out of fuel, it expands and then rapidly collapses on itself. This act creates a neutron ...

Neutrinos are some of nature’s most elusive particles. One hundred trillion fly through your body every second, but each one has only a tiny chance of jostling one of your atoms, a consequence of the ...

Scientists are like prospectors, excavating the natural world seeking gems of knowledge about physical reality. And in the century just past, scientists have dug deep enough to discover that reality’s ...

Researchers just witnessed a superconductor behavior that defies our current understanding of physics. At a certain electron density, quantum fluctuations—the phenomena that make superconductors stop ...

The Matter of Everything tells the history of physics through experiments. Any book about the history of science for a general audience will, of necessity, be something of a distortion. The question ...

Physics plays a basic role in science, engineering, and technology. It deals with the physical world all around us at the most fundamental level, seeking to understand the energy transformations of ...