Claudia de Rham has spent much of her life dedicated to unravelling the true nature of gravity, thinking deeply about gravitons, the hypothetical carrier of this enigmatic force

Claudia de Rham thinks that gravitons, hypothetical particles thought to carry gravity, have mass. If she’s right, we can expect to see “rainbows” in ripples in space-time

Nobel prizewinning theoretical physicist Peter Higgs has died aged 94. He proposed the particle that gives other particles mass – now named the Higgs boson and discovered by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in 2012

The physicist Peter Higgs quietly revolutionised quantum field theory, then lived long enough to see the discovery of the Higgs boson he theorised. Despite receiving a Nobel prize, he remained in some ways as elusive as the particle that shares his name

The very weak forces of attraction caused by the Casimir effect can now be used to manipulate microscopic gold flakes and turn them into a light-trapping tool

Ultra-fast pulses of laser light can be shaped into vortices similar to smoke rings – when chained together, they can carry enough information to transmit a simple image

The Linac Coherent Light Source in California fired an X-ray pulse that lasted only a few hundred billionths of a billionth of a second but carried nearly a terawatt of power

One way to explain why time only moves forward is the quantum arrow of time, and it has major implications for both the universe's early period and its eventual demise

Time loops have long been the stuff of science fiction. Now, using the rules of quantum mechanics, we have a way to effectively transport a particle back in time – here’s how

Fictional portrayals of parallel universes are fun to explore, but the scientific view of the multiverse looks very different

It should be possible to combine several quantum states, each with almost no energy, to create a single quantum state containing unexpectedly energy-rich regions

Through science, we are striving for objective knowledge about the universe around us. But physicists increasingly believe achieving this will never be possible

Almost all the stars that will ever exist have already been born, and they have been around long enough for life to evolve on planets that orbit them

Research has found the universe is remarkably similar in structure to the human brain. But does this mean the cosmos has a consciousness of its own?

One hundred years ago, we discovered there were other galaxies beyond our own. Now, we might be on the verge of another discovery: that there are other universes

Researchers have reshaped single electrons into spiralling matter waves with distinct handedness that could be used to study and control materials

A set of mathematical equations can help turn apparently random observations into a clock – and then measure its accuracy

Working with a tiny cantilever, physicists managed to violate the second law of thermodynamics, using less energy than expected to change the cantilever’s motion

The gamma ray burst known as GRB221009A is the biggest explosion astronomers have ever glimpsed and we might finally know what caused the blast

Commercially available quantum technology could let stock traders coordinate decisions to buy or sell nearly instantaneously using a technique called “quantum telepathy”

A weird quantum phenomenon called delocalisation has been measured for a 100-nanometre glass bead, helping reveal where the boundary lies between quantum and classical physics

To determine an object’s quantum properties, you may only need to measure how it exchanges heat with its environment, without touching the object itself

Entangled particles of light can transmit holographic images that can be selectively erased, allowing for secure communications that can also be deleted

The direction of cause and effect was brought into question for quantum objects more than a decade ago, but new calculations may offer a way to restore it

Forget atomic clocks. Nuclear clocks, which only drop a second every 300 billion years, can test whether nature's fundamental constants are constant after all

Even though the strange behaviour we observe in the quantum realm isn’t part of our daily lives, simulations suggest it is likely our reality could be one of the many worlds in a quantum multiverse

Particles of light can spend "negative time" passing through a cloud of extremely cold atoms – without breaking the laws of physics

Simple words like "force" and "particle" can mislead us as to what reality is actually like. Physicist Matt Strassler unpacks how to see things more clearly

Physicists finally know whether black holes destroy the information contained in infalling matter. The problem is that the answer hasn’t lit the way to a new understanding of space-time

Inside a hunk of a material called a semimetal, scientists have uncovered signatures of bizarre particles that sometimes move like they have no mass, but at other times move just like a very massive particle

The Impossible Man by Patchen Barss salutes Roger Penrose's groundbreaking work in physics and mathematics while challenging the idea that a genius should be exempt from ordinary obligations

Launching a million tonnes of moon dust around Earth could dim sunlight across our planet by 1.8 per cent. This would reduce the global temperature, but whether it would be worth the resources, and the risks involved in such a strategy, are unclear

Geologists think there may be vast natural stores of hidden hydrogen gas within Earth, but no one is sure how much there is or how much could be recovered for energy

A well in Nebraska is the first in the world to have been drilled in search of naturally occurring geologic hydrogen, but tests to determine how much of the gas it might supply are on hold because of a broken pump

Semi-mythical "earthquake lights" may be accompanied by changes to Earth's magnetic field. Now researchers say these changes could be used to forecast major tremors

From a photograph of algae choking an Indian river to a shocking depiction of the wearing away of the UK coast, these are some of the pictures in the running for the contest

Geologists hoping to declare a new epoch dominated by humanity’s influence on Earth have chosen Crawford Lake in Canada as the location where the start of the Anthropocene is defined

Climate researchers thought that current global average sea levels were the highest in more than 100,000 years, but new models suggest oceans just 6000 years ago may have been higher than at the beginning of the industrial revolution, and possibly even higher than today

The destruction of telecommunications cables during the eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai volcano in 2022 shows that underwater debris currents can travel at 122 kilometres per hour

An independent task force formed by NASA to look into unidentified anomalous phenomena found no evidence of alien craft, and suggests that if we want to find proof of visitors we need better data

Analysis of tree rings shows that two faults near Seattle, Washington ruptured at the same time or soon after each other more than 1000 years ago – a repeat today would cause a major disaster in the region

Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, the largest lake in South America, has been captured in detail by the European Space Agency's Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission

When most people are asked to name a river, they often reach for the Amazon or Nile, but these aren’t the only remarkable rivers out there. Here are 10 more from around the world – and solar system

The stratosphere seems to be full of aluminium particles and other metals that come from spacecraft burning up in the atmosphere, and those particles could mess up polar clouds

This spectacular selection of images is taken from the winners of the Northern Lights Photographer of the Year competition, run by Capture the Atlas

Several enormous craters left by explosions have been spotted in Siberia over the past 15 years, and a new explanation links them to hot gas – and climate change

Photographer Matjaz Krivic has been charting the effects of lithium mining on locals in the world's largest salt flat in Bolivia since 2016

An analysis of satellite observations has identified some extreme thunderstorms over the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Mexico with lightning flashes so frequent that the sky would appear continuously lit

Global warming means many of the world’s ancient rivers of ice will be gone within decades, threatening ecosystems that rely on their meltwater, a looming crisis that photographer Edward Burtynsky highlights in his work

Mysterious green sunsets were reported after the massive eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 – now simulations show how they were created and just how rare they are