The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In the fall of 2022, a Princeton University graduate student named Carolina Figueiredo stumbled onto a massive coincidence. She ...

Noncommutative geometry offers a radical reformulation of traditional geometrical concepts by replacing the classical notion of a manifold with a noncommutative algebra of coordinates. This approach ...

In October 2015, a young mathematician named Clemens Sämann was flying home to Austria from a conference in Turin, Italy, when he had a chance encounter. He found himself seated beside Michael ...

Exploring the BTZ black hole in (2+1)-dimensional gravity took me down a fascinating rabbit hole, connecting ideas I never expected—like black holes and topological phases in quantum matter! When I ...

Physicists of the 19th century assumed that space was distinct from time – and two researchers now suspect they were correct to do so. Their conclusion, which comes from considering the behaviour of ...

There is a glaring gap in our knowledge of the physical world: none of our well-established theories describe gravity’s quantum nature. Yet physicists expect that this quantum nature is essential for ...

This story is part of our Cosmic Perspective special, in which we confront the staggering vastness of the cosmos and our place in it. Read the rest of the series here. We tend to think of space-time ...

In the fall of 2022, a Princeton University graduate student named Carolina Figueiredo stumbled onto a massive coincidence. She calculated that collisions involving three different types of subatomic ...