High-temperature superconductivity is one of the great mysteries of modern physics: Some materials conduct electrical current without any resistance—but only at very low temperatures. Finding a material that remains superconducting even at room temperature would spark a technological revolution. People all over the world are therefore working on a better, more comprehensive understanding of such materials.
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Mathematician and Computer Scientist Stephen Wolfram wants to do no less than revolutionising physics. He wants to do it with computer code that gives rise to all the fundamental laws of nature that we know and like — and maybe more. Unfortunately, Einstein’s theories of general relativity inherently clash with how computers work. And yet, he and his team might have found a clever way around this problem.
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Brian Keating is an experimental physicist at the UCSD, author of Losing the Nobel Prize, and host of the Into the Impossible podcast. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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0:27 — Telescope.
5:51 — Beginning of the universe.
26:04 — Science and the Soviet Union.
31:30 — What it’s like to be a scientist.
50:26 — Age of the universe.
53:17 — Expansion of the universe.
1:01:18 — Gravitational waves.
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3:06:01 — Scientific community.
3:23:42 — James Webb telescope.
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Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), astronomers have discovered an exoplanet orbiting Barnard’s star, the closest single star to our sun. On this newly discovered exoplanet, which has at least half the mass of Venus, a year lasts just over three Earth days. The team’s observations also hint at the existence of three more exoplanet candidates, in various orbits around the star.
Located just six light-years away, Barnard’s star is the second-closest stellar system—after Alpha Centauri’s three-star group—and the closest individual star to us. Owing to its proximity, it is a primary target in the search for Earth-like exoplanets. Despite a promising detection back in 2018, no planet orbiting Barnard’s star had been confirmed until now.
The discovery of this new exoplanet—announced in a paper published today in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics—is the result of observations made over the last five years with ESO’s VLT, located at Paranal Observatory in Chile. “Even if it took a long time, we were always confident that we could find something,” says Jonay González Hernández, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in Spain, and lead author of the paper.
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Scientists FINALLY FOUND a new way to travel faster than light!
The idea of using “warp drive” technology, which used to be just a fantasy, is now becoming a real scientific topic. This is a big shift in how we think about exploring space. Think about it: right now, space travel is super slow. For example, Voyager one, a spacecraft launched in nineteen seventy-seven, took thirty-five years just to leave our solar system. But if we could travel faster than light, the possibilities for exploration would skyrocket. We could go from being stuck on Earth to becoming explorers of the whole universe. But we have to ask ourselves: are the same laws of physics that hold us back also hiding the secret to breaking free?
This concept could change the game for space travel, showing us that the physicist’s speed limit might not be as final as we thought. If we stop thinking about speed in the traditional way and focus on bending space itself, we might be able to do what once seemed impossible. The potential is mind-blowing. If we could actually make this work, it would transform our relationship with space. Suddenly, interstellar travel wouldn’t be just a dream—it could become a reality. We could visit distant galaxies, study planets far from our solar system, and even start colonies on other worlds.
Two supermassive black holes will collide in 10,000 years, warping space and time.
A Cosmic Collision in the Making
In a galaxy 9 billion light-years away, two enormous black holes are locked in a cosmic dance that will eventually end in a massive collision. These supermassive black holes, each hundreds of millions of times the mass of our sun, are currently orbiting one another. In about 10,000 years, they will merge in a violent event, unleashing enough force to distort space and time by creating gravitational waves—ripples in the universe’s fabric.
One proposed way of examining if such a force could exist is by closely monitoring asteroid trajectories, and few near-Earth asteroids are as well observed as Bennu. A new study by an international team of scientists analyzes Bennu to try and placing constraints on a possible fifth fundamental force in the search of ultralight dark matter.
Bennu, one of the most dangerous near-Earth objects, has been meticulously tracked by optical and radar astrometric data since it was discovered in 1999. As the destination for the OSIRIS-REx asteroid retrieval mission, additional X-band radiometric and optical navigation tracking data added even more trajectory precision. The idea is that any deviation in the expected trajectory of the asteroid could be the result of an unknown fifth force at work. The results of the study were published in the journal Nature Communications Physics.
All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike – and yet it is the most precious thing we have. – Albert Einstein (1879−1955)
Astronomers have observed light bending around a black hole, a phenomenon predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. By studying X-rays from a black hole in the Zwicky 1 galaxy, scientists detected unexpected “light echoes” coming from behind the black hole, proving that the black hole’s gravity was curving space-time and allowing light to bend around it.
Although this effect was predicted over a century ago, it’s the first time astronomers have witnessed it. The researchers now aim to investigate how black hole coronas produce intense X-ray flares and continue studying space-time distortion.