If this fundamental symmetry of the universe doesn’t hold, it could break open new physics.

Clusters of galaxies hold the prestigious title of "largest gravitationally bound structures in the universe," which is no small feat.

Without the Higgs, the Standard Model of particle physics comes crashing down.

The universe really likes its information — but black holes pose a huge paradox physicists can't yet solve.

At the very largest scales — zooming out from solar systems, stellar clusters and even galaxies — a surprising pattern emerges in nature.

It's a perennial sci-fi favorite: other worlds, other universes, other possibilities, right beyond the bounds of the known cosmos or just a flick of a magic device away.

Let's say you've got some random object in front of you — how about a nice hot cup of coffee?

...and break the laws of physics.

All four known forces of nature have their own unique place — and the strong nuclear force governs the very small.

Here's how the biggest thing in the universe could reveal secrets of the smallest things.

I'm a particle that really isn't; I vanish before I can even be detected, yet can be seen. I break your understanding of physics but don't overhaul your knowledge. Who am I?

So there's this stuff called "antimatter." But a weirdly small amount of it.

Neutrinos are the changelings of the subatomic world, but physicists are getting closer to pinning down the particles' true identities.

The concept of atoms had been floating around off and on for a few millennia, but it took some clever experimentation to pinpoint their existence.

We don't understand the concept of time much at all.

A recent search for oddball supersymmetric particles, which could explain some of the weirdness of the universe, came up empty-handed.

Here's how we know the distant Oort Cloud exists.

The top quark is about 100 trillion times heavier than the up quark. But why?

There are some universal certainties. Death. Taxes. The second law of thermodynamics.

Mad scientists through the ages have dreamed of holding the world hostage by threatening to destroy the whole thing. Here's how that could work.

These tiny subatomic particles, showering down from the depths of space, continue to surprise (and annoy) physicists chasing them.

Brown dwarfs are cooler than stars but hotter than planets, and despite the name, they're not even very brown.

In the cosmos' most energetic events, we find some truly out-this-world methods of manufacturing radiation.

For the precocious hunter of off-Earth life, the Drake equation is the ever-ready, go-to toolkit for estimating just how (not) lonely humans are in the Milky Way galaxy. But it's not useful.