Category: 4. Physics

Scientists seeking to bring the fusion that powers the sun and stars to Earth must deal with sawtooth instabilities — up-and-down swings in the central pressure and temperature of the plasma that fuels fusion reactions, similar to the serrated…

A long-held mystery in the field of nuclear physics is why the universe is composed of the specific materials we see around us. In other words, why is it made of “this” stuff and not other stuff?

Specifically of interest are the physical…

So far, the only direct evidence we have for the existence of dark matter is through gravity-based effects on the matter we can see.

And these gravitational effects are so pronounced that we know it must make up about 85 percent of all matter in…

The expansion of the Universe has occupied the minds of astronomers and astrophysicists for decades.

Among the cosmological models that have been suggested over the years, Lambda cold dark matter (LCDM) models are the simplest models that can…

The heliosphere is a vast region, extending more than twice as far as Pluto. It casts a magnetic “force field” around all the planets, deflecting charged particles that would otherwise muscle into the solar system and even tear through…

As surprising as it may sound, no one really knows what an electron is, and it is this fundamental question that has been the driving force for much of modern physics and eventually led to the development of quantum field theory.

To answer the…