Physics & Math, features and articles | Educational Science

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...

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...