At the end of a lecture on astronomy, describing how the planets orbit the Sun, a little old lady at the back of the room stood up and said: "What you've told us is all rubbish. The world is really a ...

One truly elegant hypothesis of physics is the "zero-energy universe" hypothesis. It proposes that the net sum of the energy in the universe perfectly equates to zero. According to the idea, if you ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I cover chemistry, from its small molecules to its big questions. You can't quite be sure you're watching PBS when the first scene ...

So, say hello to the men who turned chemistry from Breaking Bad into Breaking Good. This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry is actually pretty easy to get — and no, it doesn’t involve blue crystals or an ...

Dark matter. I've always loved the sinister, edgy sound of the phrase. Even better is the implausibility of the whole idea. If dark matter is real, then the universe is rife with a kind of invisible, ...