Spacetime wrinkles known as cosmic strings, which might have formed in the early Universe, could be a dominant source of gravitational waves at ultrahigh frequencies, according to new calculations.

A decades-old idea is quietly regaining attention in theoretical physics: ancient structures embedded in the universe’s fabric could reshape current understanding of time. Long dismissed as fringe ...

The universe is expanding; we’ve had evidence of that for about a century. But just how quickly celestial objects are receding from each other is still up for debate. It’s no small feat to measure the ...

A team of scientists has proposed a groundbreaking new theory on the Universe's origins, offering a fresh, radical take on the Big Bang's early moments. Unlike the widely accepted inflationary model, ...

The Nature Index 2026 Research Leaders reveal the leading institutions and countries/territories in the natural sciences, health sciences, applied sciences and social sciences, according to their ...

In November 2023, a faint shudder passed through a pair of L-shaped tunnels in Washington state and Louisiana. It had been travelling for a very long time. The signal, once the collaboration’s ...

An international team of researchers has announced a significant advancement in gravitational-wave astronomy, with the detection of 128 new cosmic collisions involving black holes and neutron stars.

Scientists have discovered a new way to probe the interiors of neutron stars by using gravitational waves to turn them into "cosmic tuning forks." The reverberations of such ripples in spacetime could ...

Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Today we’re leaving the podcast studio to take you on a field trip to the LIGO Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of ...

Scientists are exploring groundbreaking methods to harness Earth and Jupiter as vast observatories for detecting gravitational waves, potentially unveiling cosmic secrets from the dawn of the universe ...