Physics has always been the science of what happens. But some of its most reliable laws tell us what can’t happen, and a bold new theory says those may be the deeper truth. From a missed train to a booby-trapped jungle trail in Vietnam, here’s why “what could be” may explain what information really is ...

Physicists use ordinary words like “particle” and “fundamental,” but they don’t mean what you think. An electron isn’t a tiny ball. Put one in a box, and it fills the whole thing. One hobbyist’s frustrated, funny journey from turtles all the way down to fields all the way down ...

Yes, and ne’er the twain will meet. Both make claims about the same physical world, and they can’t both be right. A former Catholic looks at virgin births, resurrections, and faith itself, and explains why believers face a choice they can’t avoid ...

A lifelong science fiction fan asks the big question. Travel to the future? Einstein says yes. Travel to the past? Causality slams the door, and nobody from the future has dropped by to prove otherwise. Along the way: block universes, butterflies, and the possibility that time’s flow is an illusion ...

A single molecule of water isn’t wet. So where does wetness come from? From starling murmurations to consciousness, a look at emergence: how wholes become something their parts are not, and why space and time themselves may be emergent. Emergent from what? ...

Roses aren’t red, you never actually touch your keyboard, and your chair is mostly empty space. If so much of what we experience isn’t what it seems, what about time itself? Drawing on Bernardo Kastrup, a case that time’s flow is a story we tell ourselves ...

As a kid, I’d look at the stars and wonder what an alien was doing at that exact moment. Einstein ruined that question. With Wile E. Coyote, the Road Runner, and your GPS, here’s why there is no universal “now.” Sorry, Newton ...