Quantum physics

Researchers got a better look at the thoughts of chatbots, amateurs learned exactly how complicated simple systems can be, and quantum computers passed an essential milestone.

Three new species of superconductivity were spotted this year, illustrating the myriad ways electrons can join together to form a frictionless quantum soup.

The reference frames from which observers view quantum events can themselves have multiple possible locations at once — an insight with potentially major ramifications.

New observations of microscopic vortices confirm the existence of a paradoxical phase of matter that may also arise inside neutron stars.

A new experimental proposal suggests detecting a particle of gravity is far easier than anyone imagined. Now physicists are debating what it would really prove.

Researchers are exploring new ways that quantum computers will be able to reveal the secrets of complex quantum systems.

A decade after the discovery of the “amplituhedron,” physicists have excavated more of the timeless geometry underlying the standard picture of how particles move.

A 1930s-era breakthrough is helping physicists understand how quantum threads could weave together into a holographic space-time fabric.

Until his dying days, the giant of 20th-century physics obsessed over the underpinnings of space and time, and how we can all share the same version of them.