Nearly a century has passed since scientists broke the Universe. Through a complex mix of experiment and theory, physicists discovered an engine built on the mathematics of probability ticks away below the façade of reality. Referred to in vague terms as the Copenhagen interpretation, this take on the theory underpinning quantum mechanics says everything can

For the first time, an international team of physicists has successfully manipulated small numbers of light particles – known as photons – that have a strong relationship with each other. That may sound a little obscure, but it’s a fundamental breakthrough in the quantum realm that could lead to technology we currently can’t even dream

The ghost, at long last, is actually in the machine: For the first time, scientists have created neutrinos in a particle collider. Those abundant yet enigmatic subatomic particles are so removed from the rest of matter that they slide through it like specters, earning them the nickname “ghost particles”. The researchers say this work represents

It’s easy to envisage other universes, governed by slightly different laws of physics, in which no intelligent life, nor indeed any kind of organized complex systems, could arise. Should we therefore be surprised that a universe exists in which we were able to emerge? That’s a question physicists including me have tried to answer for

Transferring information from one location to another without transmitting any particles or energy seems to run counter to everything we’ve learned in the history of physics. Yet there is some solid reasoning that this ‘counterfactual communication‘ might not only be plausible, but depending on how it works could reveal fundamental aspects of reality that have

Walk through a maze of mirrors, you’ll soon come face to face with yourself. Your nose meets your nose, your fingertips touch at their phantom twins, stopped abruptly by a boundary of glass. Most of the time, a reflection needs no explanation. The collision of light with the mirror’s surface is almost intuitive, its rays

To take a picture, the best digital cameras on the market open their shutter for around around one four thousandths of a second. To snapshot atomic activity, you’d need a shutter that clicks a lot faster. Now scientists have come up with a way of achieving a shutter speed that’s a mere trillionth of a

In 2022, the physics Nobel prize was awarded for experimental work showing that the quantum world must break some of our fundamental intuitions about how the Universe works. Many look at those experiments and conclude that they challenge “locality” – the intuition that distant objects need a physical mediator to interact. And indeed, a mysterious

Few discoveries in science would revolutionize technology as much as a material that achieves superconductivity at room temperature, under relatively mild pressures. A team of physicists led by Ranga Dias, a physicist from the University of Rochester in New York now claims they might have cracked it, demonstrating a rare earth metal called lutetium combined

Is our Universe all there is, or could there be more? Is our Universe just one of a countless multitude, all together in an all-encompassing multiverse? And if there are other universes, what would they be like? Could they be habitable? This might feel like speculation heaped upon speculation, but it’s not as crazy as

Determining the passage of time in our world of ticking clocks and oscillating pendulums is a simple case of counting the seconds between ‘then’ and ‘now’. Down at the quantum scale of buzzing electrons, however, ‘then’ can’t always be anticipated. Worse still, ‘now’ often blurs into a haze of vagueness. A stopwatch simply isn’t going

Chemistry takes effort. Whether it’s by raising the temperature, increasing the odds that compatible atoms will collide in a heated smash-up, or increasing the pressure and squeezing them together, building molecules usually demands a certain cost in energy. Quantum theory does provide a workaround if you’re patient. And a team of researchers from the University

The Standard Model of particle physics is our current best-guess on what the blue-prints for matter looks like. Of all of its predictions, none are as precise as the magnetic moment of the electron. Not only is it precisely predicted, it’s among the most accurately measured of any particle’s properties. And while these two values

Quantum mechanics deals with the behavior of the Universe at the super-small scale: atoms and subatomic particles that operate in ways that classical physics can’t explain. In order to explore this tension between the quantum and the classical, scientists are constantly attempting to get larger and larger objects to behave in a quantum-like way. Back

If a nuclear bomb were dropped in your city tomorrow, would you know where to take cover? Nuclear war is a terrifying thought, but for a team of researchers at the University of Nicosia in Cyprus, it’s top of mind. In a recent study, the researchers calculated how the blast from a nuclear explosion could

Ghost imaging is a sophisticated and incredibly useful set of techniques that scientists deploy to photograph light-sensitive objects in surprisingly high resolution. By making use of a mix of quantum and classical phenomena to pull visual information from just one of a pair of entangled photons, the method can capture images where energetic rays of

Scientists have produced a sensor that converts light into an electrical signal at an astonishing 200 percent efficiency – a seemingly impossible figure that was achieved through the weirdness of quantum physics. Such is the sensitivity of the device known as a photodiode, the team responsible for its innovation says it could potentially be used

Two newly discovered forms of frozen salt water could help scientists resolve a mystery concerning the Solar System’s ice-encrusted moons. When subjected to higher pressures and lower temperatures than can be found in nature on Earth, the atoms in hydrated sodium chloride – more commonly known as salt water ice – arranged themselves in never-before-identified

Isaac Newton is credited with first formulating a theory of gravity in the latter half of the 17th century – apparently inspired by an apple falling from a tree – but fundamental aspects of gravity’s pull were also recognized by Leonardo da Vinci more than a hundred years earlier, a new study explains. The study

Scientists rattling normal frozen water around in a jar of ultracold steel balls have discovered a previously unknown form of ice, closer to liquid water than any other ice yet. This is amorphous ice, a form not found in nature on Earth. That’s because its atoms are arranged not in a neat repeating crystalline pattern,

It’s not every day you get to rediscover the words of a world-famous thinker, an influencer of Albert Einstein himself. A nearly 20-minute video interview with the ‘father of the Big Bang‘ was found in the archives of a public-service broadcaster called Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroeporganisatie (VRT), located in the Flemish region of Belgium. Watching