Light is usually described using quantum mechanics when phenomena like entanglement enter the picture. But a new paper shows ...

Forgetting feels like a failure of attention, but physics treats it as a fundamental process with a measurable price. At the ...

One of the pieces of equipment for the quantum random number generator in the NIST Boulder laboratories. Very little in this life is truly random. A coin flip is influenced by the flipper’s force, its ...

A century ago, the strange behavior of atoms and elementary particles led physicists to formulate a new theory of nature. That theory, quantum mechanics, found immediate success, proving its worth ...

Quantum information theory is a field of study that examines how quantum technologies store and process information. Over the ...

Researchers at Google have used their Willow quantum computer to demonstrate that "quantum contextuality" may be a crucial ...

In the 1960s, a group of physicists and historians began a massive project meant to catalogue and record the history of quantum physics. It was called Sources for History of Quantum Physics (SHQP). As ...

Olival Freire Jr is a professor of physics and the history of physics at the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. What makes matter stable? Why are atoms as they are? Why do different materials vary ...

We’re celebrating 180 years of Scientific American. Explore our legacy of discovery and look ahead to the future. This year is the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, according to ...

Physicists are quietly rewriting the rulebook for how we might cross the gulf between stars, not by bolting bigger rockets to ...

Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...