During its teenage and young adult years—what is now referred to as its “classical” period—physics made a lot of mistakes. In the old physics, mass and energy were separately conserved; particles’ ...

Knots are everywhere—from tangled headphones to DNA strands packed inside viruses—but how an isolated filament can knot itself without collisions or external agitation has remained a longstanding ...

We continue our exploration of fluids and fluid dynamics. We continue our exploration of fluids and fluid dynamics. How do fluids act when they're in motion? How does pressure in different places ...

Now, artificial intelligence (AI) tools are providing powerful new ways to address long-standing problems in physics. “The ...

A college student in Switzerland says he’s solved a 100-year-old physics problem. The question is about an air bubble trapped in a very narrow tube of liquid, where the bubble appears to be “stuck,” ...

University of Chicago physicists have succeeded in creating a vortex knot—a feat akin to tying a smoke ring into a knot. Linked and knotted vortex loops have existed in theory for more than a century, ...

Detailed lab experiments provide fresh insight into the physics of fluid-fluid displacement in porous media, crucial to applications like carbon dioxide sequestration or fuel cell operation. One of ...

Physics lies at the core of the earth sciences. It is essential for understanding the deep structure of Earth and the natural phenomena that affect Earth's surface, such as earthquakes and volcanic ...