Quantum Physics, features and articles | Educational Science

Aug 28, 2019

Quantum Gravity Could Reverse Cause and Effect

You've probably heard of Schrödinger's cat, the unfortunate feline in a box that is simultaneously alive and dead until the box is opened to reveal its actual state. Well, now wrap your mind around Schrödinger's time, a situation in which one event can simultaneously be the cause and effect of...

Oct 4, 2019

2,000 Atoms Exist in Two Places at Once in Unprecedented Quantum Experiment

Giant molecules can be in two places at once, thanks to quantum physics. That's something that scientists have long known is theoretically true based on a few facts: Every particle or group of particles in the universe is also a wave — even large particles, even bacteria, even human beings,...

Oct 24, 2019

Google's Quantum Computer Just Aced an 'Impossible' Test

Google just took a quantum leap in computer science. Using the company's state-of-the-art quantum computer, called Sycamore, Google has claimed quantum supremacy over the most powerful supercomputers in the world by solving a problem considered virtually impossible for normal machines. The quantum computer completed the complex computation in 200 seconds....

Oct 28, 2019

These Weirdo Stellar Corpses Have Creamy Centers Filled with Exotic Quantum Liquids

Billions of years from now, when the sun is in its final throes of death (that is, after it has already vaporized Earth), its helium core will collapse in on itself, shriveling into a tightly compressed ball of glowing gas called a white dwarf. But while these stellar tombstones already...

Nov 16, 2019

Objective Reality Doesn't Exist, Quantum Experiment Shows

Alternative facts are spreading like a virus across society. Now, it seems they have even infected science — at least the quantum realm. This may seem counter intuitive. The scientific method is after all founded on the reliable notions of observation, measurement and repeatability. A fact, as established by a...

Dec 1, 2019

Do We Live in a Quantum World?

Let's face it: quantum mechanics is really confusing. All the rules of physics that we're used to simply go straight out the window in the quantum realm. Put a particle in a box. According to classical physics (and common sense), that particle should stay in that box forever. But under...

Dec 3, 2019

Quantum Supremacy Is Unlikely, Scientist Says

Google announced this fall to much fanfare that it had demonstrated quantum supremacy — that is, it performed a specific quantum computation far faster than the best classical computers could achieve. IBM promptly critiqued the claim, saying that its own classical supercomputer could perform the computation at nearly the same...

Dec 13, 2019

Physicists Use Bubbling Quantum Vacuum to Hopscotch Heat Across Empty Space

When you touch a hot surface, you're feeling movement. If you press your hand against a mug of tea, warmth spreads through your fingers. That's the sensation of billions of atoms banging together. Tiny vibrations carry thermal energy from the water to the mug and then into your skin as...

Dec 30, 2019

The 12 Most Important and Stunning Quantum Experiments of 2019

The smallest scale events have giant consequences. And no field of science demonstrates that better than quantum physics, which explores the strange behaviors of — mostly — very small things. In 2019, quantum experiments went to new and even stranger places and practical quantum computing inched ever closer to reality,...

Jan 28, 2020

What is quantum cognition? Physics theory could predict human behavior.

The same fundamental platform that allows Schrödinger's cat to be both alive and dead, and also means two particles can speak to each other even across a galaxy's distance, could help to explain perhaps the most mysterious phenomena: human behavior. Quantum physics and human psychology may seem completely unrelated, but...

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...