Like stretch marks left on skin that expanded too quickly or cracks embedded in freezing ice, cosmic strings are artifacts of ...

A strange cosmic object described by string theory could be mistaken for an ordinary black hole from far away. If these objects do exist, they could solve a long-standing paradox about black holes.

According to big bang theory, for the first 10 - 43 seconds of the universe's life, all the forces of nature existed as one superforce. The universe was all energy, no matter. Physicists call this ...

An illustration of two black holes about to merge and emitting copious gravitational waves. And as the numbers of gravitational-wave observations have increased, physicists’ careful modeling is ...

Remember that time in the Lord of the Rings lore when the dwarves of Moria dug too greedily and too deep, unearthing the Balrog, an ancient horror not meant to roam free in the modern age? Cosmic ...

Cosmology’s neat story of a universe driven apart by a simple, invisible “cosmic fuel” is starting to fray. A growing body of ...

The idea of a multiverse consisting of "parallel universes" is a popular science fiction trope, recently explored in the Oscar-winning movie "Everything Everywhere All At Once." However, it is within ...

For various, typically historical reasons, even the best physicists claim things that sound egregious to modern observers. That doesn’t necessarily mean these ideas are completely useless—if anything, ...