Physics & Math, features and articles | Educational Science

Feb 25, 2020

Mysterious 'antihydrogen' particles reveal uncanny quantum effect

A bubbling, raucous vacuum fills quantum space, distorting the shape of every hydrogen atom in the universe. And now we know that it also distorts hydrogen's bizarro-world antimatter twin: antihydrogen. Antimatter is a little-understood substance, rare in our universe, that mimics matter almost perfectly, but with all the properties flipped...

Feb 28, 2020

Schrödinger's cat: The favorite, misunderstood pet of quantum mechanics

The thought experiment known as Schrödinger's cat is one of the most famous, and misunderstood, concepts in quantum mechanics. By thinking deeply about it, researchers have come to spectacular insights about physical reality. Who came up with Schrödinger's cat? The Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who helped found the discipline of...

Feb 28, 2020

Freeman Dyson, quantum physicist who imagined alien megastructures, has died at 96

Legendary physicist and big thinker Freeman Dyson died today at age 96 in New Jersey after a fall earlier this week, according to reports from Maine Public Radio and The New York Times. Dyson, born in England in 1923, moved to the United States in 1947 and spent most of...

Mar 5, 2020

Physicists link quantum memories across the longest distance ever

A team of scientists in China has linked quantum memories over more than 30 miles (50 kilometers) of fiber optic cable, beating the previous record by more than 40 times over. This feat is an important step toward a hack-proof internet, scientists said. The internet we use today was truly...

May 1, 2020

Online course trains students in the bizarre world of quantum computing

When the bizarre world of quantum physics — where a cat can be both alive and dead, and particles a galaxy apart are connected — is merged with computer technology, the result is unprecedented power to anyone who masters this technology first. There is an obvious dark side. Imagine a...

Aug 7, 2020

Physicists watch quantum particles tunnel through solid barriers. Here's what they found.

The quantum world is a pretty wild one, where the seemingly impossible happens all the time: Teensy objects separated by miles are tied to one another, and particles can even be in two places at once. But one of the most perplexing quantum superpowers is the movement of particles through...

Sep 3, 2020

New quantum paradox throws the foundations of observed reality into question

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Perhaps not, some say. And if someone is there to hear it? If you think that means it obviously did make a sound, you might need to revise that opinion....

Nov 17, 2020

Physicists discover the 'Kings and Queens of Quantumness'

Is that light particle more like a ball careening through space, or more of a smeary mess that is everywhere at once? The answer depends on whether the absurd laws of subatomic particles or the deterministic equations that govern larger objects hold more sway. Now, for the first time, physicists...

Dec 7, 2020

China claims fastest quantum computer in the world

A team of Chinese scientists has developed the most powerful quantum computer in the world, capable of performing at least one task 100 trillion times faster than the world's fastest supercomputers. In 2019, Google said it had built the first machine to achieve quantum supremacy, the first to outperform the...

Feb 1, 2021

Chinese researchers to send an 'uncrackable' quantum message to space

Uncrackable quantum messages can now be sent through the air and will soon be beamed into space. Researchers at the University of Science and Technology in China (USTC) worked out in 2018 how to secretly share quantum keys between orbiting satellites and ground stations, as Live Science previously reported. That...

Mar 17, 2021

Why does DNA spontaneously mutate? Quantum physics might explain.

Quantum mechanics, which rules the world of the teensy-tiny, may help explain why genetic mutations spontaneously crop up in DNA as it makes copies of itself, a recent study suggests. Quantum mechanics describes the strange rules that govern atoms and their subatomic components. When the rules of classical physics, which...

Apr 22, 2021

A student's physics project could make quantum computers twice as reliable

A student's tweak in quantum computing code could double its ability to catch errors, piquing the interest of Amazon's quantum computing program. The new code could be used to build quantum computers that live up to the promises of lightning-fast processing time and the ability to solve more complex problems...

May 3, 2021

World's 1st multinode quantum network is a breakthrough for the quantum internet

Scientists have gotten one step closer to a quantum internet by creating the world's first multinode quantum network. Researchers at the QuTech research center in the Netherlands created the system, which is made up of three quantum nodes entangled by the spooky laws of quantum mechanics that govern subatomic particles....

May 26, 2021

What is quantum entanglement?

Quantum entanglement is one of the uber-bizarre phenomena seen when things get itty-bitty, or inside the quantum realm. When two or more particles link up in a certain way, no matter how far apart they are in space, their states remain linked. That means they share a common, unified quantum...

Jun 10, 2021

Physicists link 'quantum memories' in early step toward quantum internet

When the precursor to today's internet carried its first message in 1969, clunky but functional classical computers had already been around for decades. Now, physicists are designing the embryonic threads of a whole new internet for moving and manipulating a radically different type of information: the quantum bit, or qubit....