You might have learned in school that there are three phases of matter: solid, liquid, and gas. That is a useful simplification for young students, but there are in fact many, many…

In the mid-1990s, I studied mathematics. I wasn’t really sure just what I wanted to do with my life, but I was awed by the power of mathematics to describe the natural world. After…

The police don’t often sympathize with speeding drivers, but if you’re a quantum gravity physicist who was distracted by a grand epiphany while driving at night, you might have…

The name of the image—the “Flammarion engraving”—may not ring a bell, but you’ve seen it many times. It depicts a traveler wearing a cloak and clutching a walking-stick;…

Before there is life, there must be structure. Our universe synthesized atomic nuclei early in its history. Those nuclei ensnared electrons to form atoms. Those atoms agglomerated…

How do you feel about the multiverse?” The question was not out of place in our impromptu dinner-table lecture, yet it caught me completely off-guard. It’s not that I’ve never…

What is orbital rotation? The basic picture is clear enough: One body is at rest, while the other follows some circular or elliptical path around it. The trouble is just to figure…

Being a scientist can be like willingly entering into a Roman gladiatorial contest. The hours are long, there’s a rank smell of indentured servitude, and at any minute your colleagues…

Experimentalists are the cowboys of physics,” says Melissa Franklin, an experimental particle physicist at Harvard University. They have to be able to tell theorists, “I don’t…

If one is looking for signals from an extraterrestrial civilization, why not practice on some of the non-human communication systems already known on our own planet? Whales have had…