What is the hottest problem in fundamental physics today? Physics aficionados most probably would answer: quantum gravity. Of all the fundamental forces of nature, only gravity still stands outside the rubric of the quantum theory. The difficulty of quantizing gravity has led to radical theories such as string theory, with its bold predictions of higher [...]

Life, Unbounded is preparing a series of posts on exoplanets, one a day for five days – this planetary menagerie will contain some of the most fascinating, but unsung, “heroes” of exoplanetary science . In the meantime, since our closest gas giant world is once again bright in the increasingly wintery skies of the northern [...]

It’s an exciting time for solar system exploration. NASA’s Dawn mission has now entered into an orbit around the minor planet known as Vesta, a 500km diameter chunk of rock and who-knows-what-else that orbits the Sun beyond Mars and in the classical asteroid belt. After hanging out at Vesta for a year Dawn will pull [...]

The slope of an unnamed mountain near the moon’s north pole will be the final destination for NASA’s twin GRAIL spacecraft, which are scheduled to crash into the lunar surface at high speed today. The impacts are planned for 5:28 P.M. Eastern Standard Time. The twin probes, nicknamed Ebb and Flow, have orbited the moon [...]

Among the countless achievements of Isaac Newton, any number of which would have made him a houseold name on their own, his articulation of the force of gravity in the late 17th century surely ranks near the top. The legend of Newton’s inspiration coming from a falling apple is often dismissed as apocryphal, but the [...]

Colonel Chris Hadfield is a Canadian astronaut, a former mission specialist on STS-74 who also performed multiple EVAs on STS-100, and, for a few hours longer, the well-loved commander of the International Space Station mission 35. He has been a great inspiration for space travel via every type of social media (with the assistance of [...]

Unification is an ancient goal in physics. From the time that 19th century physicists like Maxwell and Clausius attempted to unite disparate physical phenomena, the search for a grand unified theory that would conjoin every known force and physical law has always been an implicit or explicit dream of physicists. The search for unification is [...]