The electromagnetic force can be attractive, repulsive, or “bendy,” but is always mediated by the photon. How does one particle do it all?

Despite no experimental evidence showing that gravitons exist, they remain a respectable concept in the world of professional physicists.

There’s no upper limit to how massive galaxies or black holes can be, but the most massive known star is only ~260 solar masses. Here’s why.

In the year 2000, physicists created a list of the ten most important unsolved problems in their field. 25 years later, here’s where we are.

Hawking’s refusal to upgrade his communication system preserved a voice that became iconic, not just for its sound, but for the profound identity it conveyed.

Despite the Sun’s high core temperatures, atomic nuclei repel each other too strongly to fuse together. Good thing for quantum physics!

Electromagnetism, both nuclear forces, and even the Higgs force are mediated by known bosons. What about gravity? Does it require gravitons?

There was a lot of hype and a lot of nonsense, but also some profoundly major advances. Here are the biggest ones you may have missed.

Matt Strassler’s journey into fundamental physics culminates in a brilliant explanation of the Higgs field. Enjoy this exclusive interview.

By improving quantum error correction, quantum computations are now faster than ever. But parallel universes? That’s utter nonsense here.

If atoms are mostly empty space, then why can’t two objects made of atoms simply pass through each other? Quantum physics explains why.

From a hot, dense, uniform state in its earliest moments, our entire known Universe arose. These unavoidable steps made it all possible.

50 years ago, Stephen Hawking showed that black holes emit radiation and eventually decay away. That fate may now apply to everything.

We have very specific predictions for how particles ought to decay. When we look at B-mesons all together, something vital doesn’t add up.

Most waves need a medium to travel through. But the way that light and gravitational waves travel shows that space can’t be a medium at all.

One of the fundamental constants of nature, the fine-structure constant, determines so much about our Universe. Here’s why it matters.

“A person’s mass is made not of ‘stuff’ in the way we normally think about it, but rather our mass is made of energy.”

Scalars, vectors, and tensors come up all the time in physics. They’re more than mathematical structures. They help describe the Universe.

Our classical intuition is no good in a quantum Universe. To make sense of it, we need to learn, and apply, an entirely novel set of rules.

It’s the ultimate setup for a Thanksgiving Day disaster. The physics of water and its solid, liquid, and gas phases compels us not to do it.

There are a few small cosmic details that, if things were just a little different, wouldn’t have allowed our existence to be possible.

In partisan political times, recognizing the scientific truth is more important than ever. Scientists must be vocal and clear about reality.

Why hasn’t matter fallen apart over billions of years? The mystery might start with protons.

Whether your hair is straight, wavy, curly, or kinky isn’t just genetic in nature. It depends on the physics of your hair’s very atoms.

One of the 20th century’s most famous, influential, and successful physicists is lauded the world over. But Feynman is no hero to me.

Beyond stars, galaxies, and gravity, studying the fundamental workings of nature reveals widely applicable lessons for learners everywhere.

The secret sauce is the real world.

An in-depth interview with astronomer Kelsey Johnson, whose new book, Into the Unknown, explores what remains unknown about the Universe.

The Universe changes remarkably over time, with some entities surviving and others simply decaying away. Is this cosmic evolution at work?

Artificial intelligence is much more than image generation and smart-sounding chatbots; it’s also a Nobel-worthy endeavor rooted in physics!