Physics & Math, features and articles | Educational Science

Feb 15, 2024

Daylight saving time 2024: When does the time change?

Daylight saving time will begin on Sunday, Mar. 10, 2024 at 2 a.m. local time, when clocks will spring forward by one hour. This year's daylight saving time (sometimes erroneously called daylight SAVINGS time) ends on Nov. 3, 2024, when clocks fall back by an hour. In most of Europe,...

Feb 15, 2024

8 ways you can see Einstein's theory of relativity in real life

Albert Einstein began formulating the theory of relativity in 1905 to explain the behavior of objects in space and time, and the groundbreaking work can be used to predict things such as the existence of black holes, light bending due to gravity and the behavior of planets in their orbits....

Mar 2, 2024

What's the fastest thing on Earth?

A spacecraft launching, a race car zipping around a track, a cheetah hurtling toward its prey — our home planet is full of high-speed feats. But what's the fastest thing on Earth? The answer depends on how you define thing and on Earth. And the top candidates — neutrinos and...

Mar 11, 2024

Albert Einstein: Biography, facts and impact on science

Albert Einstein was a German-American physicist and probably the most well-known scientist of the 20th century. He is famous for his theory of relativity, a pillar of modern physics that describes the dynamics of light and extremely massive entities, as well as his work in quantum mechanics, which focuses on...

Mar 12, 2024

Why does snow squeak when you walk on it?

Walking in a winter wonderland can be a feast for the senses as you feel the brisk air, see a magnificently white landscape and hear the sound of snow crunching underfoot. But while much about snow science is well documented, such as how snowflakes get their unique shapes or why...

Mar 13, 2024

Opposites attract? Not in new experiment that finds loophole in fundamental rule of physics

Scientists have observed like charges attracting each other over long distances in an apparent contradiction of a fundamental principle of physics. First stated by French physicist Charles-Augustin de Coulomb in the 18th century, opposites attract and like charges repel each other has become a familiar idiom — even being famously...

Mar 14, 2024

Flight MH370 vanished 10 years ago. Will it ever be found?

It has been ten years since Malaysia Airlines passenger flight MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014. To this day it remains one of the biggest aviation mysteries globally. It's unthinkable that a modern Boeing 777-200ER jetliner with 239 people on board can simply vanish without any explanation. Yet multiple searches...

Aug 5, 2017

Is Space Full of Quantum Foam?

Look at space under a microscope and what do you see? Nothing. Magnify 1,000 times. Nothing. Magnify 1,000,000 times. Still nothing. Magnify 1,000,000,000 times. Absolutely nothing. At this point, the average person would probably be satisfied with the conclusion that space is, in fact, nothing. This makes intuitive sense, after...

Oct 5, 2017

World's Most Precise Clock Powered by Supercold Strontium Atoms

A new kind of atomic clock is more precise than any yet built, with the ability to tick smoothly for a thousand times the lifetime of the universe. In addition to being the best timekeeper to date, the new so-called quantum gas clock might one day offer insights into new...

Oct 10, 2017

Quantum Communication Demonstrated in Real-Life City Conditions

A quantum-encrypted message containing more than one bit of information in each particle of light was beamed through the air between two buildings in a real-life city for the first time, a demonstration that could simplify quantum communication and make it more viable in the future, according to a recent...

Oct 25, 2017

There and Back Again: Scientists Beam Photons to Space to Test Quantum Theory

Researchers have taken a famous quantum-physics experiment to new heights by sending light, in the form of photons, to space and back, demonstrating the dual-particle-wave nature of light over much greater distances than scientists can achieve on Earth. In the quantum theory of reality, particles like electrons and photons behave...

Nov 2, 2017

The Subatomic Discovery That Physicists Considered Keeping Secret

A pair of physicists announced the discovery of a subatomic event so powerful that the researchers wondered if it was too dangerous to make public. The explosive event? The duo showed that two tiny particles known as bottom quarks could theoretically fuse together in a powerful flash. The result: a...

Nov 29, 2017

Quantum Computers Bust Problem Conventional Computers Can't Solve

Fifty-odd atoms buzz through a pocket of empty space. Invisible lines of force — quantum magnetism — chain them together. Jiggle one, the others jiggle in sympathy. Ring another like a bell and the others will pick up the song at a different pitch or a slower speed. Every action...

Dec 17, 2017

These Quantum Droplets Are the Most Dilute Liquids in the Known Universe

A team of physicists in Barcelona has created liquid droplets 100 million times thinner than water that hold themselves together using strange quantum laws. In a paper published Dec. 14 in the journal Science, researchers revealed that these bizarre droplets emerged in the strange, microscopic world of a laser lattice...

Dec 23, 2017

Time Crystals to Tetraquarks: Quantum Physics in 2017

Quantum Physics in 2017 (Image credit: sakkmesterke/Shutterstock)The year 2017 was wild and unpredictable. And what science is better-suited for a weird year than quantum physics? This year ushered in astonishing quantum discoveries from all corners — deep-buried neutrino labs in Antarctica, quantum-computing labs at major universities and even thunderstorms rumbling...