Physics

Lawrence Krauss, Member (2005) in the School of Natural Sciences, asks "What if the world around us is just a shadow of reality?" in the New Yorker's Elements.

... The notion that the world of our experience is an accident of our particular...

Time crystals are hypothetical structures that pulse without requiring any energy—like a ticking clock that never needs winding. The pattern repeats in time in much the same way that the atoms of a crystal repeat in space. The idea was so...

In Quanta's Abstractions blog, top women in mathematics and physics, including Miranda Cheng, Visitor (2011) in the School of Natural Sciences, Tracy Slatyer, Member (2010–13) in the School, Maria Chudnovsky, Veblen Research Instructor (2003–05) in...

In the 1960s, the charismatic physicist Geoffrey Chew, Member (1956) in the School of Mathematics/Natural Sciences, espoused a radical vision of the universe, and with it, a new way of doing physics, arguing that "Nature is as it is because this is...

On April 14, 1954, Albert Einstein, one of the Institute's first Faculty members (1933–55), gave the last lecture of his life. Speaking to physics students at Princeton University, he remarked that although quantum mechanics works, “it is difficult...

Steven Weinberg discusses how the development of quantum mechanics in the first decades of the twentieth century came as a shock to many physicists. Today, despite the great successes of quantum mechanics, arguments continue about its meaning, and...

In 1930, the Institute for Advanced Study was established near the grounds of Princeton University to act as the "department store for the freedom of ideas." The original and often speculative thinking that the Institute encouraged over the years...

One gets the sense that Freeman Dyson has seen everything. It’s not just that at 92 he’s had a front row seat on scientific breakthroughs for the past century, or that he’s been friends and colleagues with many of the giants of 20th-century physics...

Like many astrophysicists, Sara Seager sometimes has a problem with her perception of scale. Knowing that there are hundreds of billions of galaxies, and that each might contain hundreds of billions of stars, can make the lives of astrophysicists...

On December 2, Robbert Dijkgraaf, Director and Leon Levy Professor, will discuss the wonders of light as part of his sixth live lecture for the DWDD University series. “From the big bang to the rainbow, the magic of light connects us with everything...