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Quantum Physics
For generations, physicists have been searching for a quantum theory of gravity. But what if gravity isn't actually quantum at all?
In the earliest stages of the hot Big Bang, equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have existed. Why aren't they equal today?
Scientists will be able to make detailed "Claymation-like" movies of chemical reactions.
What do ghosts and anomalous galaxy rotation rates have in common? Some sci-fi enthusiasts believe the answer involves "parallel universes."
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.
There's a quantum limit to how precisely anything can be measured. By squeezing light, LIGO has now surpassed all previous limitations.
Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein are locked in an eternal battle over the nature of gravity. Whose side are you on?
2023's Nobel Prize was awarded for studying physics on tiny, attosecond-level timescales. Too bad that particle physics happens even faster.
The perfectly accessible, perfectly knowable Universe of classical physics is gone forever, no matter what interpretation you choose.
If nature were perfectly deterministic, atoms would almost instantly all collapse. Here's how Heisenberg uncertainty saves the atom.
Our greatest tool for exploring the world inside atoms and molecules, and specifically electron transitions, just won 2023's Nobel Prize.
The matter that creates black holes won't be what comes out when they evaporate. Will the black hole information paradox ever be solved?
A relatively new interpretation of quantum mechanics asks us to reimagine the process of science itself.
American students are being compelled to specialize earlier and earlier. Here's what it takes to build a successful physics foundation.
Can quantum computers do things that standard, classical computers can't? No. But if they can calculate faster, that's quantum supremacy.
By probing the Universe on atomic scales and smaller, we can reveal the entirety of the Standard Model, and with it, the quantum Universe.
Nature may not allow us full access to the weirdness of quantum mechanics.
All biological systems are wildly disordered. Yet somehow, that disorder enables plant photosynthesis to be nearly 100% efficient.
Headlines have blared that quasar ticking confirms that time passed more slowly in the early Universe. That's not how any of this works.
Quantum physics is starting to show up in unexpected places. Indeed, it is at work in animals, plants, and our own bodies.
From a photon's viewpoint, the Universe is timeless and dimensionless.
The familiar terrain of solids, liquids, and gases gives way to the exotic realms of plasmas and degenerate matter.
How are we to deal with the quantization of spacetime and gravity?
Up until 2002, we thought that the heaviest stable element was bismuth: #83 on the periodic table. That's absolutely no longer the case.
There is no such thing as a void in the Universe.
When Einstein gave General Relativity to the world, he included an extraneous cosmological constant. How did his 'biggest blunder' occur?
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?
Particle physicists use gigantic accelerators to investigate the infinitesimal.
Once the initial blaze of heat dissipated, the constituent particles of atoms were free to bind.
Quantum uncertainty and wave-particle duality are big features of quantum physics. But without Pauli's rule, our Universe wouldn't exist.