Physics & Math, features and articles | Educational Science

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....

May 14, 2018

Lasers Could Make Computers 1 Million Times Faster

A billion operations per second isn't cool. Know what's cool? A million billion operations per second. That's the promise of a new computing technique that uses laser-light pulses to make a prototype of the fundamental unit of computing, called a bit, that could switch between its on and off, or...

Jul 16, 2018

Chinese Researchers Achieve Stunning Quantum-Entanglement Record

Scientists have just packed 18 qubits — the most basic units of quantum computing — into just six weirdly connected photons. That's an unprecedented three qubits per photon, and a record for the number of qubits linked to one another via quantum entanglement. So why is this exciting? All the...

Jul 24, 2018

Weird Paradox Says 2 Losses Equals a Win. And It Could Lead to Fast Quantum Computers.

Two losing games can add up to a winning one, according to a concept called Parrondo's paradox. Now, physicists have shown that this paradox also exists in the realm of quantum mechanics, the rules that govern subatomic particles. And it could lead to faster algorithms for future quantum computers. [The...

Jul 27, 2018

How Quantum Computers Could Kill the Arrow of Time

A new technique for quantum computing could bust open our whole model of how time moves in the universe. Here's what's long seemed to be true: Time works in one direction. The other direction? Not so much. That's true in life. (Tuesday rolls into Wednesday, 2018 into 2019, youth into...

Aug 22, 2018

Ancient Quasars Provide Incredible Evidence for Quantum Entanglement

Using two ancient galactic cores called quasars, researchers have taken a massive step forward toward confirming quantum entanglement — a concept that says that the properties of particles can be linked no matter how far apart in the universe they may be. If quantum entanglement is valid, then a pair...

Dec 27, 2018

18 Times Quantum Particles Blew Our Minds in 2018

Mind-blowing science (Image credit: NASA)The small world got up to some pretty big things this year. From strange Schrödinger’s-cat situations to mysteries of water to impossible-seeming particles flying up from the Antarctic ice, particle physics proved that there are many unknowns in the universe for us to explore. Here are...

Feb 12, 2019

A Computer Spotted a Turtle Hiding Out in a Cloud of 'Quantum Fireworks'

Zap a mass of supercooled atoms with a magnetic field and you'll see quantum fireworks — jets of atoms firing off in apparently random directions. Researchers discovered this back in 2017, and they suspected there might be a pattern in those fireworks. But they couldn't spot it on their own....

Mar 6, 2019

Physicists May Have Found a Way to 'Untangle' Information Trapped in a Black Hole

Black holes are gravitational monsters, squeezing gas and dust down to a microscopic point like great cosmic trash compactors. Modern physics dictates that, after being consumed, information about this matter should be forever lost to the universe. But a new experiment suggests that there might be a way to use...

Mar 11, 2019

Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics

The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible, Albert Einstein famously once said. These days, however, it is far from being a matter of consensus that the universe is comprehensible, or even that it is unique. Fundamental physics is facing a crisis, related to two popular...

Mar 15, 2019

Physicists Reverse Time for Tiny Particles Inside a Quantum Computer

Time goes in one direction: forward. Little boys become old men but not vice versa; teacups shatter but never spontaneously reassemble. This cruel and immutable property of the universe, called the arrow of time, is fundamentally a consequence of the second law of thermodynamics, which dictates that systems will always...

Mar 20, 2019

More Than One Reality Exists (in Quantum Physics)

Can two versions of reality exist at the same time? Physicists say they can — at the quantum level, that is. Researchers recently conducted experiments to answer a decades-old theoretical physics question about dueling realities. This tricky thought experiment proposed that two individuals observing the same photon could arrive at...