Physics
LIGO Data Hint That Many Black Holes Were Born When Stars Died Without a Bang
A Caltech-led study of 257 black hole mergers finds a spike at 10 solar masses and a gap at 12 to 16, matching what 'failed supernova' theories predict.
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Caltech
13 stories from Planck Standard. Latest: November 12, 2026.
ScienceCaltech Robot Assembles a Truss in Orbit, the First Autonomous Construction in Space
The ASTRA system, funded by DARPA, has spent six months in orbit building a 1.4-meter antenna reflector from tubes and joints without astronauts.
ScienceWebb 'Digital Twin' Strips Starlight to Reveal an Exoplanet Hidden in Old Images
A Caltech and Northwestern team built a physics-based model of Webb's camera that boosts planet-detection sensitivity two to 15 times and uncovered a world sitting unnoticed in archived data.
ScienceCaltech Robot Builds a Structure in Orbit Without Human Hands, a First
The ASTRA experiment, riding on a small satellite, has added a third truss bay to a planned 1.4-meter reflector antenna in a step toward kilometer-scale structures in space.
PhysicsCaltech Study: Dying Sun Could Wreck Outer Planets in 1 Billion Years
New simulations show the Sun shedding its outer layers in bursts could destabilize Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune far sooner than the quintillion years once assumed.
PhysicsQuantum Computer Shortcut Lets 104-Qubit IBM Chip Simulate Particle Collisions, Caltech Team Reports
Mid-circuit measurements cut the depth needed to prepare colliding particles, and a heavy particle appeared in the simulated energy density in a Nature Physics paper.
PhysicsCaltech Physicists Finally Measure a Quantum 'Energy Ladder' Predicted 40 Years Ago
Using laser-trapped strontium atoms as a quantum simulator, the team directly measured energy levels in two theories describing matter at a tipping point.
ScienceA Radio Source in the Milky Way Has Been Blazing for 21 Years, Brightened Sixfold, Never Expanded and Emits No X-Rays
VT J1906+0849 is the brightest transient in the entire VLA Sky Survey. Its brightness temperature is up to 10 billion kelvin, gas near it moves at thousands of kilometers per second, and it flared again in late 2025. Nothing in the catalog of known galactic sources fits.
PhysicsCaltech Broke the Rule That Says One Photon Pair Can Only Double a Microscope's Resolution
The trick was routing one half of an entangled pair through the lenses three times instead of once. Lihong Wang's group had been stuck at 1.8× since 2023.
PhysicsDying Stars Kick Themselves Across the Galaxy by Firing Off Gas Blobs, Study Finds
A Caltech astrophysicist calculates that lopsided eruptions from bloated, dying sun-like stars act like thousands of tiny rocket thrusts, nudging the stars to speeds of about a kilometer per second.
PhysicsString Theory Emerges Naturally From Simple Physics Rules
Physicists discover that starting with basic particle collision principles, the mathematics spontaneously produces string theory signatures without assuming strings exist.
- Physics
String Theory Emerges Spontaneously From Simple Physics Rules in Breakthrough Study
Researchers using bootstrap approach discover string theory signatures without assuming strings existed from the start.
ScienceCaltech Breakthrough Slashes Quantum Computer Requirements to Just 10,000 Qubits
A new error-correction architecture developed with startup Oratomic could accelerate fault-tolerant quantum computing by a decade.