Physics & Math, features and articles | Educational Science

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...

Jan 16, 2018

How Fast Can Quantum Computers Get?

Over the past five decades, standard computer processors have gotten increasingly faster. In recent years, however, the limits to that technology have become clear: Chip components can only get so small, and be packed only so closely together, before they overlap or short-circuit. If companies are to continue building ever-faster...

Jan 19, 2018

China's Quantum-Key Network, the Largest Ever, Is Officially Online

China has the quantum technology to perfectly encrypt useful signals over distances far vaster than anyone has ever accomplished, spanning Europe and Asia, according to a stunning new research letter. Bits of information, or signals, pass through people's houses, the skies overhead and the flesh of human bodies every second...

Jan 23, 2018

The New Thinnest Mirrors in the World Use Quantum 'Excitons' to Reflect Light

Two separate teams of scientists have built the thinnest mirrors in the world: sheets of molybdenum diselenide (MoSe2), each just a single atom wide. The mirrors were developed at the same time at Harvard University and the Institute for Quantum Electronics in Zurich, and described in a pair of papers...

Jan 25, 2018

Crystal Slab of 'Snowflakes' to Become World's Tiniest Sonic Shield

Cut snowflakes out of sheets of paper, and you've got a nice winter art project. Grow a microscopic sheet of silicon crystal studded with snowflake-shaped holes, and you've got the thinnest sonic insulator ever designed, according to new research. A team of physicists, writing in a paper published Jan. 18...

Jan 25, 2018

Quantum Physicist Named 'Australian of the Year'

Chalk one up for the physicists, as 2018's Australian of the Year title goes to a quantum physicist whose work contributed to the creation of the world's thinnest wire and the first transistor made from a single atom. Michelle Yvonne Simmons, a professor of quantum physics in the Faculty of...

Mar 12, 2018

Quantum Physicists Doubled the Information Speed Limit of the Universe

There's a limit to how fast information can move through the universe, just like there's a limit to how fast everything else can move through the universe. It's a rule. But a team of quantum physicists, like quantum physicists often do, has figured out how to bend it. Under normal...

Apr 11, 2018

This Quantum Random Number Generator Can Never Be Hacked

Lotteries, accidents and rolls of dice — the world around us is full of unpredictable events. Yet generating a truly random series of numbers for encryption has remained a surprisingly difficult task. Now, researchers have used a mind-bending experiment relying on both Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum mechanics,...

Apr 20, 2018

Quantum Radar Could Make Stealth Technology Obsolete

The frigid Canadian arctic is a rough place to try and catch a spy. For one, the region is smack dab on top of the world's magnetic North Pole, where the violently charged particles released by sunspots and solar flares are inevitably drawn. This solar interference makes it hard enough...

Apr 26, 2018

Swiss Scientists Perform Massive Test of 80-Year-Old, 'Spooky' Quantum Paradox

A team of Swiss scientists has performed a massive test of one of the strangest paradoxes in quantum mechanics, a huge example of the sort of behavior Albert Einstein skeptically called spooky action at a distance. The story begins more than 80 years ago. Way back in 1935, Einstein and...

Apr 30, 2018

These 'Spooky' Entangled Atoms Just Brought Quantum Computing One Step Closer

Scientists have made the biggest and most complex quantum-computer network yet, getting 20 different entangled quantum bits, or qubits, to talk to each other. The team was then able to read out the information contained in all those so-called qubits, creating a prototype of quantum short-term memory for the computer....