In sports and in cosmology, the rules of the game aren't supposed to change as you go along. Athletes call this playing fair. Cosmologists call it the cosmological principle, and it means that the ...

ADVANCES in fundamental theory have often been guided by the principle that reliance is to be placed on the most directly observed quantities, that is, those involving least theoretical assumptions.

What is the meaning of life? Even the best of us couldn't hope to answer that question in a Universe Today article. But there are those who would try to "constrain" it, at least in terms of physics. A ...

One of the most exciting prospects in physics has been discovering that fundamental constants are not actually constant at all. When I first started writing, physicists and astronomers were just ...

A team in Paris has made the most precise measurement yet of the fine-structure constant, killing hopes for a new force of nature. As fundamental constants go, the speed of light, c, enjoys all the ...

Researchers at the Kastler Brossel Laboratory in Paris have made the most precise measurement of one of the fundamental constants, called the fine-structure constant, providing physicists with a vital ...