Take a pencil, stretch out your arm, and let go. We all know that the pencil will fall. OK, but what about dropping a bowling ball? Is that the same thing? No wait! How about a watermelon dropped off ...

Physicists have struggled to understand the nature of time since the field began. But a new theoretical study suggests time could be an illusion woven at the quantum level. When you purchase through ...

Speed alone may be the factor that draws many sports fans to the bobsled, luge and skeleton events at this year’s Beijing Winter Olympics. But beneath the thrilling descents of the winding, ...

Melting time: Kae Nemoto looked at the melting of discrete time crystals. (Courtesy: iStock/William Potter) Researchers in Japan have developed a new mathematical technique to explore the ...

Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. To find out, we imagined a souped-up spacecraft that could ...

Scientists have created a new class of laser beam that appears to violate long-held laws of light physics. These new beams, which the team calls “spacetime wave packets,” follow different rules of ...

If you divide the matter in the Universe into smaller and smaller constituents, you'll eventually reach a limit when you hit a fundamental, indivisible particle. All macroscopic objects can be divided ...

How does a homing pigeon navigate, often over hundreds of miles of territory it has never seen before? Professor (of physics) Henry L. Yeagley of Pennsylvania State College thinks he has found the ...