Two Swiss scientists have run the largest ever simulation of a quantum computer to date, by achieving a record-breaking 45 qubit quantum circuit on a supercomputer in… Read more “Swiss scientists simulate record-breaking 45 qubit circuit”

Some of the most profound predictions in theoretical physics, such as Einstein’s gravitational waves or Higgs’ boson, have taken decades to prove with experiments. But every now… Read more “How scientists created a new state of matter”

In the region of space just outside Earth’s magnetic field, NASA has detected electrons that are being accelerated to almost the speed of light – and no… Read more “High-speed electrons so fast, they break current physics models”

It’s not a bad day at work. Five of the biggest fundamental problems in physics seem sorted in one go. The model that can do this, formulated by Guillermo… Read more “Tweak solves five of the biggest problems in physics in one go”

Time crystals were first predicted in 2012. Now researchers have created time crystals for the first time and say they could one day be used as quantum… Read more “Physicists Create World’s First Time Crystal”

In physics, they are all the same thing. But to you, me, and everyone else, time moves in one direction: from expectation, through experience, and into memory.… Read more “Time Might Only Exist in Your Head”

“Optical quantum computing is still a long way off, but our successful experiment to stop light gets us further along the road,” said lead researcher. Physicists have… Read more “Physicists successfully stop light”

  A theoretical species of particle might answer nearly every question about our cosmos—if scientists can find it. The universe is unbalanced. Gravity is tremendously weak. But… Read more “The secret lives of long-lived particles”

The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman uses evolutionary game theory to show that our perceptions of an independent reality must be illusions. As we go about our daily… Read more “The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality”

What would happen to you if you went back in time and killed your grandfather? A model using photons reveals that quantum mechanics can solve the quandary—and… Read more “The Grandfather Paradox”

In an article submitted on April 7, 2015, to the arXiv repository of physics papers, a group of Hungarian researchers reported on a study in which they… Read more “A Fifth Force?”

“A new mechanism is proposed for exciting the magnetic state of a ferromagnet.” Twenty years ago these words were written by IBM scientist John Slonczewski in his… Read more “20th anniversary of invention of Spin Torque MRAM”

All light sources work by absorbing energy – for example, from an electric current – and emit energy as light. But the energy can also be lost… Read more “Superfast light source from artificial atom”

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… Read more “Calculate Your Way to Special Relativity”

Dark matter could be made of particles that each weigh almost as much as a human cell and are nearly dense enough to become miniature black holes,… Read more “Dark Matter Particle Could be Size of Human Cell”

Light behaves both as a particle and as a wave. Since the days of Einstein, scientists have been trying to directly observe both of these aspects of… Read more “The first ever photo of light as a particle and wave”

New research supports an old, more intuitive theory of how sub-atomic particles behave. Cathal O’Connell explains. With its ideas of particles zipping in and out of existence,… Read more “Quantum surrealism”

WITH presidential primaries in full steam, with the country wrapped up in concern about the economy, immigration and terrorism, one might wonder why we should care about… Read more “Finding Beauty in the Darkness”

People around the world cheered yesterday morning (Feb. 11) when scientists announced the first direct detection of gravitational waves — ripples in the fabric of space-time whose… Read more “Gravitational Waves: What the Discovery Means for Science”

On Thursday, the scientists at LIGO announced they’d officially found gravitational waves. This truly is a remarkable discovery, and confirms the final piece of Einstein’s general theory… Read more “LIGO Got a Reaction”

IN FEBRUARY 2012, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek decided to go public with a strange and, he worried, somewhat embarrassing idea. Impossible as it seemed, Wilczek… Read more “‘Time Crystals’ Could Upend Physicists’ Theory of Time”

  It seems that this is the year that black hole physics is making a splash—in addition to dark matter, black hole talks seemed to be everywhere… Read more “Physics with an added quantum of uncertainty”

To investigate the influence of gravity on the propagation of light, researchers usually have to examine astronomical length scales and huge masses. However, physicists at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg… Read more “Investigation into how light behaves in curved space”

If you follow physics, you have likely heard the rumor by now: Physicists working with a pair of gigantic detectors have finally discovered gravitational waves—ripples in space… Read more “Krauss: Gravitational wave discovery is just that.”

Quantum key distribution (QKD) may one day allow for nearly perfectly secure data communication on a large scale, but before this can happen, QKD networks must extend… Read more “Quantum key distribution outperforms quantum repeaters”