Travel half the distance to your destination, and there’s always another half to go. Despite Zeno’s Paradox, you always arrive right on time.
Search Results
You searched for: quantum
When you bring two fingers together, you can feel them “touch” each other. But are your atoms really touching, and if so, how?
First derived by Emmy Noether, for every symmetry a theory possesses, there’s an associated conserved quantity. Here’s the profound link.
When the average person has a “theory,” they’re just guessing. But for a scientist, a theory is the pinnacle of what we can achieve.
The zero-point energy of empty space is not zero. Even with all the physics we know, we have no idea how to calculate what it ought to be.
Einstein hated “spooky action at a distance,” but much to his chagrin, quantum mechanics remains as spooky as ever.
Neuroscientist and author Bobby Azarian explores the idea that the Universe is a self-organizing system that evolves and learns.
If light can’t be bent by electric or magnetic fields (and it can’t), then how do the Zeeman and Stark effects split atomic energy levels?
Singularities frustrate our understanding. But behind every singularity in physics hides a secret door to a new understanding of the world.
The difference between predictions and observations of the magnetic properties of muons suggests a mystery for the Standard Model.
If you said “with the Big Bang,” congratulations: that was our best answer as of ~1979. Here’s what we’ve learned in all the time since.
We thought the Big Bang started it all. Then we realized that something else came before, and it erased everything that existed prior.
Is the multiverse real? It’s one of the hottest questions in all of theoretical physics. We invited two astrophysicists to join the debate.
The anthropic principle has fascinating scientific uses, where the simple fact of our existence holds deep physical lessons. Don’t abuse it!
The combination of charge conjugation, parity, and time-reversal symmetry is known as CPT. And it must never be broken. Ever.
Einstein called his idea “abominable,” but the world of physics came around to embracing the views of Georges Lemaître.
In scientific theories, the Multiverse appears as a bug rather than as a feature. We should squash it.
American students are being compelled to specialize earlier and earlier. Here’s what it takes to build a successful physics foundation.
Is this video four minutes long? Not necessarily.
▸
4 min
—
with
Recent claims put LK-99 as the first room temperature, ambient pressure superconductor ever. Has the game changed, or is it merely hype?
Predicted way back in the 1960s, the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 completed the Standard Model. Here’s why it remains fascinating.
At a fundamental level, only a few particles and forces govern all of reality. How do their combinations create human consciousness?
“To take this in, you need to ride inside the mathematical symbols.”
2023’s Nobel Prize was awarded for studying physics on tiny, attosecond-level timescales. Too bad that particle physics happens even faster.
From the tiniest subatomic scales to the grandest cosmic ones, solving any of these puzzles could unlock our understanding of the Universe.
In Sun-like stars, hydrogen gets fused into helium. In the Big Bang, hydrogen fusion also makes helium. But they aren’t close to the same.
At very high and very low temperatures, matter takes on properties that open up an entire Universe of remarkable new possibilities.
A theoretical physicist returns to Penrose and Hameroff’s theory of “quantum consciousness.”
Does it have a deeper significance — or is it just a number?
There’s a big difference between the notions of ‘false vacuum’ and ‘true vacuum’ states. Here’s why we don’t want to live in the former.