Cosmologists face a dilemma. The rise of quantitative cosmology, exemplified by the release of new data in March on the cosmic microwave background from the WMAP satellite (see pp16-19; print version ...

Harvard physicist Lisa Randall talks about her new book, Knocking On Heaven's Door, an examination of the latest findings in cosmology and the history of scientific thought, and discusses a report ...

Around 300 years ago Isaac Newton showed that the same laws governed the fall of an apple and the movement of the planets, and he changed how we see the world. Around a hundred years ago, Albert ...

The e-mail arrived out of the blue last week. Did I want to attend a “private screening” in Covent Garden, London, of a new short film about cosmology, particle physics and love? It sounded ...

The fundamental nature of living things challenges assumptions that physicists have held for centuries.

Dark matter remains one of the most compelling enigmas in modern cosmology. Although it does not emit light, its gravitational influence is essential for the formation and evolution of cosmic ...

Discoveries on the grandest scale in the cosmos, as well as findings a bit closer to home, share this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics. Cosmologist James Peebles of Princeton University won half the ...

Illustration of a set of real zeros of a graph polynomial (middle) and two Feynman diagrams. Credit: Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences How can the behavior of elementary particles ...

THIS YEAR’S Nobel prize for physics was split two ways, but both halves went for discoveries beyond Earth. One was for a finding that is, by astronomical standards, quite close by—a planet going ...