From phone boxes and flux capacitors to black holes and hot tubs, sci-fi has created plenty of ways to explore the fourth dimension.

Physicists have long treated space and time as the stage on which quantum particles perform, not as actors in the drama themselves. A new theoretical framework now flips that script, treating space ...

Mind-bending materials called quasicrystals have an orderly structure, but without a regularly repeating pattern. They’ve been found in meteorites and the debris from the first atomic bomb test.

Gravity has become an unlikely viral villain, blamed for an imagined global blackout in which the planet briefly lets go of everything that is not nailed down. At the same time, some of the most ...