Physics Archives - Attention to the Unseen

Why reality is more than the sum of its particles

From elsewhere — Wed, 06 May 2026 01:12:32 +0000

Felix Flicker writes: What is the world made of? For centuries, people have believed that matter is constructed from tiny, indivisible parts. Some of the earliest known references come from the Greek philosopher Democritus, who taught that the Universe was composed of atoms the size of dust motes floating in sunlight. Theravada Buddhism developed the concept of kalapas, indivisible bundles of properties fleeting into and out of existence. Alchemy’s description of fundamental ‘corpuscles’, expounded by Isaac Newton and others, derived...

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Physicists discover the most complex forms of ice yet

From elsewhere — Sun, 03 May 2026 01:24:31 +0000

Shalma Wegsman writes: Ice comes in more forms than what you’ll find in a freezer or a glacier. Since 1900, scientists have observed more than 20 phases of ice, many of them shaped under extreme conditions. The growing list includes hot ice and even ice that conducts electricity. Ice is the name for any phase of water that is solid and crystalline, meaning that it has a repeating molecular structure. Over the past decade, computer simulations have predicted tens of...

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Universe’s expansion rate cannot be explained by current physics

From elsewhere — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:21:22 +0000

Live Science reports: There’s a central crisis in cosmology: Different measurements yield different values for the expansion rate of the universe. Now, a comprehensive analysis combining decades of independent measurements suggests that this discrepancy is not due to error or uncertainty; instead, it’s a potential pathway to new physics beyond the standard cosmological model. Astronomers calculate the universe’s expansion rate, or Hubble constant, in two ways. One method is to use measurements of the distance to the cosmic microwave background...

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Physicists have found something (which is nothing) that can move faster than light

From elsewhere — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 00:34:42 +0000

Science Alert reports: For the first time, physicists have observed that ‘holes’ in light can move faster than the light itself. They’re known as phase singularities or optical vortices, and since the 1970s, scientists have predicted that, just as eddies in a river can move faster than the flowing water around them, so too can whirlpools in a wave of light outrun the light they’re embedded within. This does not break relativity, which states that nothing can travel faster than...

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How astronomers are unveiling the ‘skeleton’ of the universe

From elsewhere — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 23:58:54 +0000

Paul Sutter writes: The universe is a vast, unseen loom, weaving galaxies into an intricate cosmic web through invisible threads of matter. This cosmic web is the fundamental scaffolding of everything we see, dictating where galaxies form and how they evolve. Much of this architecture remains a mystery, its delicate pathways hidden, and uncovering these cosmic threads requires new eyes and persistent effort. But a new observation has helped us trace one in the Ursa Major Supergroup. In a preprint...

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Are the mysteries of quantum mechanics beginning to dissolve?

From elsewhere — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 01:23:41 +0000

Philip Ball writes: None of the leading interpretations of quantum theory are very convincing. They ask us to believe, for example, that the world we experience is fundamentally divided from the subatomic realm it’s built from. Or that there is a wild proliferation of parallel universes, or that a mysterious process causes quantumness to spontaneously collapse. This unsatisfying state was a key element of Beyond Weird, my 2018 book on the meaning of quantum mechanics. It’s no wonder experts are...

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Is time a fundamental part of reality? A quiet revolution in physics suggests not

From elsewhere — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 01:19:14 +0000

Pack-Shot/Shutterstock By Florian Neukart, Leiden University Time feels like the most basic feature of reality. Seconds tick, days pass and everything from planetary motion to human memory seems to unfold along a single, irreversible direction. We are born and we die, in exactly that order. We plan our lives around time, measure it obsessively and experience it as an unbroken flow from past to future. It feels so obvious that time moves forward that questioning it can seem almost pointless....

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The truth that physics can no longer ignore

From elsewhere — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 01:39:53 +0000

Adam Frank writes: On October 8, 2024, the field of physics was plunged into controversy. That day, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for discoveries not involving black holes, cosmology, or strange new subatomic particles, but about AI. How could the discipline’s highest award go to research about machines designed to mimic human brains? Where was the physics in that? For most of the 20th century, physicists largely ignored living systems. They understood living things as machines, albeit ones...

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China’s JUNO observatory shows promise in solving neutrino mysteries

From elsewhere — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 01:52:14 +0000

Scientific American reports: Trillions of neutrinos whiz through our bodies every day, pulsing from the sun, outer space and deep beneath Earth. Yet these elusive subatomic particles have proven difficult to study. That could soon change, however. Buried 700 meters beneath the rolling hills of southern China, an enormous neutrino observatory called JUNO has released its first results after a mere 59 days of operation. And so far, they are very promising, physicists say. “The physics result is already world-leading...

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Cosmic paradox reveals the awful consequence of an observer-free universe

From elsewhere — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 01:05:51 +0000

Matt von Hippel writes: Tinkering at their desks with the mathematics of quantum space and time, physicists have discovered a puzzling conundrum. The arcane rules of quantum theory and gravity let them imagine many different kinds of universes in precise detail, enabling powerful thought experiments that in recent years have addressed long-standing mysteries swirling around black holes. But when a group of researchers examined a universe intriguingly like our own in 2019, they found a paradox: The theoretical universe seemed...

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