Sabine Hossenfelder: Backreaction

That life might have come to earth traveling through outer space used to be a fringe theory called ‘panspermia’. But in the past decade or so, we have seen an interesting shift in how scientists regard the idea. Let’s take at one new study that might support ‘panspermia,’ as well as other facts that support the theory.

I looked at the cases of vanishing scientists in the US and have to admit... it's very odd. Here are my thoughts.

Over the past few years, China has invested heavily in its renewable energy sector. In 2025, the country built enough energy capacity to power Germany twice over, with the vast majority of that capacity coming from solar and wind power. But while it’s invested in green energy, Beijing has also continued building coal and nuclear power plants – this dichotomy has led to some people hailing China

To this day, researchers don’t fully understand quantum physics. But in a new paper, physicists from MIT say that that’s okay – because the phenomena we use quantum physics to explain can actually be understood using classical physics. Really? Let’s take a look.

The biggest open problem in the foundations of physics is that Einstein’s theory of gravity, General Relativity, does not cooperate with quantum mechanics. Physicists have tried to solve this issue by coming up with a theory of quantum gravity, but those theories fall apart when you need them most – inside of black holes and at the Big Bang. Recently, though, physicists published a new

Natural selection allows animals – including humans – to slowly adapt to their environments over tens of thousands of years. Unfortunately for us humans, we’re quickly changing our environments and lifestyles, building sprawling cities and working at desks for 10 hours a day. According to a new paper, we now have good evidence that humans are no longer fit to live in the world we’ve created.

According to the New York Post, the U.S. used a “long-range quantum magnetometer” that can “find the electromagnetic fingerprint of a human heartbeat” in its Easter weekend operation to rescue an F-15 weapons systems officer. But does the U.S. actually have the crazy quantum surveillance capabilities that the Post claims it does? Let's find out.

Mathematical functions are built from operations, which are used to perform the calculations that make science and technology run. But what if we could do away with multiplication, addition, subtraction, and division? That’s what one mathematician has done in a new paper – he claims that everything in mathematics can be done with just one operation, which he’s calling “eml”. Let’s take a look.

MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) is a theory of gravity that explains the physical phenomena we observe in galaxies with surprising accuracy, but it falls apart when it’s applied to galaxy clusters. The widely accepted dark matter theory, meanwhile, can apply to both. But according to new research by astrophysicists, observational data shows that our universe is full of more dead stars than we

Virtual particles, depending on who you ask, are either a yet-unsolved quirk of the mathematics that we use to calculate physics, or a type of real particle that’s constantly popping into existence before quickly disappearing. In a recent paper, physicists claim that they’ve done an experiment that proves that virtual particles are, indeed, real things. Let’s take a look.

The Fermi Paradox is the question of why we haven’t been contacted by any extraterrestrial species. In a recent paper, astrophysicists analyzed the paradox by instead examining how civilizations with the ability to send signals through space might develop. Unfortunately for us, their findings are quite bleak – but let’s take a look anyway.

If it’s been a while since you’ve taken a chemistry class, you’re lucky – over time, the periodic table has been expanding as physicists produce brand-new atomic nuclei. But the thing about these nuclei is they’re extremely short-lived, sticking around for less than a nanosecond. Recently, though, physicists say they’ve figured out a calculation that should help researchers create new nuclei that

Recently, physicists at CERN announced that they’d re-discovered an anomaly in the way that certain particles (called B mesons) decay. The anomaly has been noted in multiple other analyses over the years, though most recently it had disappeared. It could indicate that there are particles that we still have yet to discover, or that we need to revise the standard model of physics. Or it could mean

Progress in quantum computing as an industry has been relatively stagnant for a while now. But over the past few weeks, that’s changed. Multiple groups focused on quantum cryptography (using quantum computers to break previously-unbreakable encryption protocols) published breakthrough papers in their field, raising concerns that quantum computers could break the crypto industry sooner than we

String theory has changed the foundations of physics profoundly, and I for one am worried about its legacy.

Over the years, computer scientists have used cutting-edge processors to simulate the brains of increasingly more complex animals. They’ve already simulated worm and fruit fly brains, and are now working on mice. But according to a new paper, they’ve made a breakthrough that might allow them to simulate human brains, which contain 80 billion neurons compared to a fruit fly’s 140,000. Let’s take

The Riemann Hypothesis is an open problem in maths which – if proved correct – would show us a pattern in prime numbers. The zeta function, a central part of the hypothesis, has been linked to quantum mechanics, and recently a group of physicists linked it to gravitational equations associated with black holes. What does this mean, exactly? Let’s take a look.

UFOs are now known as UAPs, which stands for “unidentified anomalous phenomena.” These phenomena are increasingly popping up in headlines as technology advances, but for some reason scientists are still reluctant to research them. Let’s take a look at some recent UAP sightings and why we need to invest more into UAP research.

The search for life on another planet is one of the most exciting things in astrophysics. As humanity has searched the universe for signs of life, we’ve found a surprising number of clues suggesting that alien life might exist on multiple other planets. Let’s take a look at how this search is developing and what “signs of life” really are.

Recently, Finnish researchers made waves by announcing progress in the field of wireless energy transfer using a combination of sound waves, laser systems, and electromagnetic radiation. While they haven’t miraculously figured out how to beam energy long distances with perfect efficiency, their research – and other projects in the same field – have made some significant progress in wirelessly