Animals Can Count. How Far Does Their Number Sense Go?
Crows recently demonstrated an understanding of the concept of zero. It’s only the latest evidence of animals’ talents for numerical abstraction.
People Who Text While Walking Actually Do Ruin Everything
Clever experiments demonstrate how having your face in your phone disrupts the flow of pedestrian traffic and makes life difficult for everyone.
An Ultracold Plasma Models the Universe’s Most Extreme Places
The super cool, dense particle swarm gives physicists a way to study the insides of stars and gas giants—without ever leaving the lab.
How Pi Keeps Train Wheels on Track
Happy 3/14! Here's how this mathematical constant keeps train cars from flying off their tracks during turns.
A New Kind of Space Explosion Reveals the Birth of a Black Hole
A supernova-like explosion dubbed the Camel appears to be the result of a newborn black hole eating a star from the inside out.
How to Use Your Speedometer to Figure Out Where Your Car Is
You should never drive in a car with no windows. But if you ever do find yourself in one, you can use physics to get your bearings.
How Universes Might Bubble Up and Collide
To understand how universes might inflate and bump into each other in the hypothetical multiverse, physicists are studying digital and physical analogs of the process.
Scientists Discover the First Room-Temperature Superconductor
Physicists finally achieved the long-sought goal, but there’s a catch: Their compound requires crushing pressures to keep from falling apart.
What Even Is Friction, Anyway?
You might think of it as the force that slows things down, but you literally couldn't get anywhere without it.
Is Dark Matter Just Black Holes Made During the Big Bang?
Stephen Hawking once proposed that unseen “primordial” black holes might be the hidden dark matter. A series of new studies shows how it can work.