New research suggests a way to move heat around "tidally locked" alien planets: ocean currents whipping around the worlds faster than they rotate.
Paul Sutter received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2011. After spending three years at the Paris Institute of Astrophysics, he is now a visiting scholar at the Ohio State University's Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics. Sutter is the host of several podcasts and YouTube series, consults for TV and film productions, and frequently makes public appearances discussing physics and astronomy topics and the role science plays in society.
We don't know why the universe is dominated by matter over antimatter, but there could be entire stars, and maybe even galaxies, in the universe made of antimatter.
A weird, super-powerful particle that's not truly a particle could have dominated the universe when it was just a second old, releasing a flood of ripples that permeated all of space-time.
A mysterious "kick" in the early universe may have produced more matter than antimatter. And that imbalance may have also led to the creation of dark matter, researchers now say.
The universe may be filled with "mirror" particles — and these otherwise-undetectable particles could be shrinking the densest stars in the universe, turning them into black holes.
There have been no signs of supersymmetry, and the theory is looking a little shaky, researchers say.
New research proposes that the first black holes came from clumps of gravitinos, exotic, hypothetical particles that managed to survive the first chaotic years of the Big Bang.
What if there is more than one cosmological agent for dark energy? This mixture would have strange effects in our universe, making it potentially detectable with upcoming surveys.
Einstein's failed dream could ultimately become his ultimate triumph, as a small group of theoretical physicists rework his old ideas to explain the most pressing issues of modern science.
If teensy black holes could be produced inside the world's largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, that would be a boon for physics.
What if black holes aren't black holes at all, but rather the cosmic equivalent of fuzzy, vibrating balls of string?
The EmDrive doesn't just violate our fundamental understanding of the universe; the experiments that claim to measure an effect haven't been replicated. When it comes to the EmDrive, keep dreaming.
Our sun's death is a long way off — about 4.5 billion years, give or take — but someday it's going to happen, and what then for our solar system?
At the center of a black hole, matter is compressed down to an infinitely tiny point, and all conceptions of time and space completely break down.
A pair of astronomers is advocating a daring new research program: to turn our widening search for life beyond Earth into a hunt for dark matter.