Physics & Space
From quantum mechanics and condensed matter to astrophysics and cosmology — new discoveries in the physical world, made accessible.
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Could dark matter slowly change its weight? A new idea explains an odd sign in the sky
Physicists built a model where dark matter, the invisible stuff that outweighs stars, slowly changes its mass over billions of years. When tested against maps of the sky, this idea fit the real data a little better than today's standard picture of the universe.
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A telescope the size of Earth sees a black hole's jet twisting near its source
Astronomers made the sharpest-ever picture of the gas beam shooting from a giant black hole in the galaxy 3C 279. The innermost part of the beam is bent almost sideways from the rest and points nearly straight at Earth, and this twist keeps showing up over ten years.
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A specific carbon molecule may explain a faint glow James Webb sees in space
Scientists think a molecule called hexahydropyrene creates part of a faint infrared glow seen in a star-forming cloud. They measured its light fingerprint in the lab and matched it to what the James Webb Space Telescope sees.
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A bumpy surface might make sliding smoother, not rougher, a physics study hints
Scientists found that when the squeezing force between two crystal surfaces is strongest in the middle and fades to zero at the edges, the surfaces can slide with even less friction. They showed this with mathematics and computer simulations of tiny sliding chains.