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![Colorful illustration in which a sphere divided into four quadrants is surrounded by spheres divided into halves and thirds.]](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/TETRAQUARK_520x292.jpg)
‘Impossible’ Particle Discovery Adds Key Piece to the Strong Force Puzzle
...meeting of Syracuse University’s quark physics group, Ivan Polyakov announced that he had uncovered the fingerprints of a semi-mythical particle. “We said, ‘This is impossible. What mistake are you making?’”...
An Ultra-Precise Clock Links the Quantum World With Gravity
...between the top and the bottom of a millimeter-tall cloud of atoms. The work is a step toward studying physics at the intersection of general relativity and quantum mechanics, two...
Did the Chicken Come First or Is It Turtles All the Way Down?
The apparent paradox of the chicken and the egg smells like “turtles all the way down.” This puzzle shows how biology and physics can overcome infinite regress. When you consider...
Scant Evidence of Power Laws Found in Real-World Networks
...that earned Kenneth Wilson the 1982 Nobel Prize in physics. Soon after, power laws formed the core of two other paradigms that swept across the statistical physics world: fractals, and...
For His Sporting Approach to Math, a Fields Medal
...had a hard time finding that with physics.” He ended up focusing on an area of math that hewed very close to physics and was motivated almost entirely by physical...
Scientists Discover Exotic New Patterns of Synchronization
...the wild,” said Strogatz. When you include a second variable, like amplitude variations, “that opens up a new zoo of phenomena.” Roukes, who is a professor of physics, applied physics...
The Strange Numbers That Birthed Modern Algebra
The 19th-century discovery of numbers called “quaternions” gave mathematicians a way to describe rotations in space, forever changing physics and math. Imagine winding the hour hand of a clock back...
The Case Against Dark Matter
...he says it’s too soon to tell whether everything in the paper — which draws from quantum information theory, thermodynamics, condensed matter physics, holography and astrophysics — hangs together. Either...
How Radio Astronomy Reveals the Universe
Radio waves, longer and less energetic than visible light, give astronomers access to some of the most obscure physics in the cosmos. If you ask an astronomer to choose the...