Essential for life: this illustration shows how fundamental constants of nature set the fundamental lower limit for liquid viscosity. (Courtesy: thehackneycollective.com) The values of the fundamental ...

For nearly half a century, theoretical physicists have made a series of discoveries that certain constants in fundamental physics seem extraordinarily fine-tuned to allow for the emergence of a ...

A crucial number that rules the universe goes big in a strange quantum material. The fine-structure constant is about 10 times its normal value in a type of material called quantum spin ice, ...

Detecting or constraining the possible time variations of fundamental physical constants is an important step toward a complete understanding of basic physics and hence the world in which we live. A ...

This is a short introductory note to the texts of lectures presented at a Royal Society Discussion meeting held on 14-15 Febrary 2005 and now published in this issue of Philosophical Transactions A.

As cheat sheets go, it is a long one. Every four years, a task force of the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA), headquartered in Paris, releases a short-hand description of the ...

An international team of astronomers has looked at something very big — a distant galaxy — to study the behavior of things very small — atoms and molecules — to gain vital clues about the fundamental ...

Billions of years ago the strength of the electromagnetic interaction was different at opposite ends of universe. That’s the surprising conclusion of a group of physicists in Australia, who have ...

Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. Sean Carroll , a theoretical physicist at Caltech, who ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about physics, science, academia, and pop culture. One promising avenue for this sort of study is a search for changes in ...

The cosmological constant has plagued physicists for more than a century. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. There is a fundamental ...