Quantum physics

The secret to making a qubit for future quantum computers might depend on knowing how to tie knots in unusual materials, argues the physicist Charlie Marcus.

A new proposal would use quantum hard drives to combine the light of multiple telescopes, letting astronomers create incredibly high-resolution optical images.

An enigmatic connection between the forces of nature is allowing physicists to explore gravity’s quantum side.

Chiara Marletto is trying to build a master theory — a set of ideas so fundamental that all other theories would spring from it. Her first step: Invoke the impossible.

Spurred on by quantum experiments that scramble the ordering of causes and their effects, some physicists are figuring out how to abandon causality altogether.

A new thought experiment indicates that quantum mechanics doesn’t work without strange numbers that turn negative when squared.

Twenty years ago, physicists set out to investigate a mysterious asymmetry in the proton’s interior. Their results, published today, show how antimatter helps stabilize every atom’s core.

The result highlights a fundamental tension: Either the rules of quantum mechanics don’t always apply, or at least one basic assumption about reality must be wrong.

It has been thought of as many things: a pointlike object, an excitation of a field, a speck of pure math that has cut into reality. But never has physicists’ conception of a particle changed more than it is changing now.