Articles about physics

Could AI become conscious? Physicists and neuroscientists search for answers

Will artificial intelligence serve humanity — or will it spawn a new species of conscious digital beings with their own… Read More

LIGO starts its fourth round of searching for gravitational waves and black holes

After three years of upgrading and waiting, due in part to the coronavirus pandemic, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory has… Read More

Illustration with 17th-century view of solar system blending into quantum hardware

How quantum computing could transform everything everywhere, but not all at once

What does quantum computing have in common with the Oscar-winning movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once”? One is a mind-blowing… Read More

Protein design and physics earn UW professors a pair of prestigious Breakthrough Prizes

Researchers at the University of Washington working on both protein design and the understanding of gravity have been awarded the… Read More

Professor tackles one more mystery about quantum mechanics and time’s flow

The University of Washington physicist who once ran a crowdfunded experiment on backward causation is now weighing in with a potential solution… Read More

From Big Bang to Big Chill, physicist Brian Greene contemplates the beginning (and end) of everything

You might think it’s depressing to contemplate the view that the universe is likely to end in everlasting darkness —… Read More

Scientists slash the upper limit for the neutrino’s mysterious mass in half

Scientists from the University of Washington and other institutions around the world say they’ve reduced the upper limit for the… Read More

SESAME synchrotron sheds new light on Middle Eastern science, history and politics

GeekWire’s Alan Boyle reports on a $90 million science project with a diplomatic twist in Jordan, one of the stops… Read More

Black hole portrait wins Breakthrough Prize for Event Horizon Telescope’s team

What’s $3 million divided by 347? That’s the math problem to be solved by the physicists on the Event Horizon… Read More

LIGO and Virgo detectors get in sync for gravitational-wave hunt that’ll last a year

Physicists won’t be fooling around on April 1 at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in Washington state and Louisiana, or… Read More

Scientists add four black hole collisions to LIGO’s list, including the biggest so far

Four more mergers of black holes, including the biggest one recorded to date, have been added to a catalog generated… Read More

51 years after discovering pulsars, Jocelyn Bell Burnell wins $3M Breakthrough Prize

British astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell missed out on a share of the Nobel Prize for her part in the discovery… Read More

What does the Higgs boson turn itself into? Large Hadron Collider confirms theory

It’s been six years since physicists at Europe’s Large Hadron Collider announced the discovery of the Higgs boson, but they’re… Read More

How small satellites tackle big challenges, from orbital manufacturing to exoplanets

LOGAN, Utah — No one has ever built a satellite in space, but thanks in part to a team of students… Read More

Einstein’s right again: Star obeys relativity as it whirls around Milky Way’s black hole

News Brief: A 26-year-long observational campaign provides clear evidence of the effect that general relativity has on the motion of… Read More

Expert panel calls for U.S. to move ahead with construction of electron ion collider

News Brief: A report from the National Academies endorses the idea of building a large-scale electron ion collider to probe… Read More

Physicists at CERN add a new top-quark twist to tangled tale of the Higgs boson

News Brief: Experiments at Europe’s Large Hadron Collider have produced hard-to-come-by evidence of interactions between the Higgs boson and top… Read More

The way we think of black holes just might be in for a radical change … again

After decades’ worth of mystery, it feels as if physicists are finally closing in on the nature of black holes,… Read More

How number crunchers could help crack the cosmological mystery of dark energy

Big data just might give astronomers a better grip on the answer to one of the biggest questions in physics:… Read More

‘Eggs’ for alien Earths? At 94, physicist Freeman Dyson’s brain is still going strong

Alien megaspheres … rockets powered by nuclear bombs … freeze-dried life in outer space: These are just some of the… Read More

Stephen Hawking’s ‘Final Theory’ goes into publication – but it’s not the final word

Weeks after the death of British physicist Stephen Hawking, his final research paper on the nature of our universe and… Read More

Underground experiment takes a step toward solving matter-antimatter puzzle

An experiment conducted deep underground in an old South Dakota gold mine has given scientists hope that a future detector… Read More

Even after death, Stephen Hawking stirs up fresh cosmological tiffs and tributes

The ashes of the late British physicist Stephen Hawking will get a fitting resting place in Westminster Abbey, near the… Read More

Get a sampler of Stephen Hawking’s ‘crazy smarts’ in his Seattle lecture on the theory of everything

This week’s passing of famed British physicist Stephen Hawking has sparked reflection around the globe — and perhaps, dreamily, even throughout… Read More

Stephen Hawking, the world’s most famous physicist, dies peacefully at the age of 76

Stephen Hawking, the British physicist who became famous for his way-out theories and for overcoming debilitating disease, has died at… Read More

Pitch perfect: Neil deGrasse Tyson calls Seahawks play against Eagles a ‘legit Galilean Transformation’

Embed from Getty Images Seattle Seahawks fans don’t need an astrophysicist to tell them that quarterback Russell Wilson is capable… Read More

Breakthrough Prize ceremony shines glitzy scientific spotlight on cosmic mappers

This year’s Breakthrough Prizes, cast as the “Oscars of Science,” are going to genetic engineers, disease fighters, math whizzes — and… Read More

No-surprise Nobel: LIGO physicists win prize for gravitational wave discoveries

This year’s Nobel Prize for physics is going, unsurprisingly, to three people who represent the hundreds of researchers behind the first… Read More

Geoffrey Rush as Albert Einstein in "Genius"

Sex, spies and Einstein on TV: National Geographic’s ‘Genius’ spices up science

There have been plenty of TV documentaries about Albert Einstein, but almost none of them begin with a political assassination… Read More

From POW to Nobel-winning physicist: UW’s Hans Georg Dehmelt dies at 94

The University of Washington says the first Nobel laureate in its history, Hans Georg Dehmelt, has passed away in Seattle… Read More