An artist's interpretation of a magnetar. Magnets and the magnetic force are ubiquitous in our everyday lives, helping to guide us in unfamiliar territory and attach our kids' artwork to the fridge.

Black holes aren’t what they eat. Einstein’s general relativity predicts that no matter what a black hole consumes, its external properties depend only on its mass, rotation and electric charge. All ...

Right at the brink of a black hole, gravity twists space and time so violently that ordinary physics starts to fall apart.

Current textbooks often refer to the Lorentz-Maxwell force governed by the electric charge. But they rarely refer to the extension of that theory required to explain the magnetic force on a point ...

Cutting-edge supercomputer simulations reveal intricate processes around black holes, improving our understanding of ...

SINCE the third edition of this volume was published in 1915, the theory of relativity has been developed. It is now recognised that Maxwell's theory that the ultimate seat of electromagnetic and ...

A central idea of physics is that reference frames don't change fundamental laws. It shouldn't matter where you observe an event or how fast you are moving, the laws of physics should remain the same ...

Magnetic fields around black holes decay quickly, researchers report. This finding backs up the so-called 'no-hair conjecture' predicted by Einstein's general relativity. Black holes aren't what they ...

A simulation of the magnetic field lines (green) surrounding a black hole (left). As the field lines break and reconnect, pockets of plasma form (center of green circles). These plasma pockets launch ...