Paul Sutter

Mad scientists through the ages have dreamed of holding the world hostage by threatening to destroy the whole thing. Here's how that could work.

These tiny subatomic particles, showering down from the depths of space, continue to surprise (and annoy) physicists chasing them.

For the precocious hunter of off-Earth life, the Drake equation is the ever-ready, go-to toolkit for estimating just how (not) lonely humans are in the Milky Way galaxy. But it's not useful.

Right now, as you read this very text, your DNA is getting sliced up by tiny, invisible bullets.

As good skeptics, we shouldn't immediately believe general relativity's tangle of mathematics at first blush. Instead, we need evidence. Good evidence.

As good skeptics, we shouldn't immediately believe general relativity's tangle of mathematics at first blush. Instead, we need evidence. Good evidence.

At 13.8 billion years ago, our entire observable universe was the size of a peach and had a temperature of over a trillion degrees.

In the late 1990s, theoretical physicists uncovered a remarkable connection between two seemingly unrelated concepts in theoretical physics.

Hydrogen in extreme conditions, like below the cloud tops of Jupiter, starts acting…very strange.

You would think that electrons would be easy enough to describe — but a quantum-mechanical property called "spin" makes that task much less straightforward.

If the moon typically rises in the east, why will the 2017 total solar eclipse begin in the west?

By now, most people have heard the refrain: "The Higgs boson creates mass." But the reality is a bit more complicated than that.

The story of Copernicus' clash with the Church over the arrangement of heavenly bodies is often painted in black and white, but at the time, philosophy, science and religion were all mixed up.

Could we actually warp and bend space-time to make a convenient tunnel, making all our galactic dreams come true? Short answer: not likely.

Explaining the source of sunspots is a pretty tough nut to crack.

Spoiler alert: the universe is flat.

Weird and mysterious radio signals coming from outer space often are followed by claims of "aliens did it." That's likely not the case, says one astrophysicist.

Instead of just sitting back, relaxing and enjoying the light show the universe is putting on, some people feel compelled to object: Those colors are fake! Here's why such complaints are unwarranted.

A particle traveling from one spot to another doesn't exactly stay a particle, or at least not the same kind of particle.

Something in the deep reaches of space is pulling Earth's galactic neighborhood toward it. What is this so-called Great Attractor, and will it eventually swallow up our cosmic home?

Even complex astrophysics is beautiful when seen as a "song of the stars."

What really happened at the start of the Big Bang?

Brown noise is also known as Brownian noise because its change in sound signal from one moment to the next is random.