The nature of time is an age-old conundrum for physicists, philosophers, biologists and theologians. The Newtonian picture of time—a kind of cosmic clock that ticks off time in a manner that applies identically to everyone and everything—tightly aligns with our experience. But with special and general relativity, Einstein showed the fallacy inherent in experience.

As physicists attempt to answer some of science’s biggest questions about the universe, they are testing the limits of experimental and observational science itself. In this program leading physicists, astronomers, …

We once shared the planet with Neanderthals and other human species. Some of our relatives may have had tools, language and culture. Why did we thrive while they perished?

We look around us—constantly. But how often do we listen around us? Sound is critically important to our bodies and brains, and to the wider natural world. In the womb, we hear before we see.

A century after Einstein’s mathematics suggested the possibility of black holes, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is finally observing them. The project’s latest achievement is the first image of the …

A second doesn’t always feel like a second—time can seem to slow down if you’re riding a death-defying roller coaster, or speed up while you’re having a night out on the town. But just what’s going on inside our heads to skew our perception of time?