Science and Math News | Quanta Magazine
WEBIlluminating basic science and math research through public service journalism. Quanta Magazine is committed to in-depth, accurate journalism that serves the public interest. Each article braids the complexities of science with the malleable art of storytelling and is meticulously reported, edited and fact-checked.
A New Map of All the Particles and Forces | Quanta Magazine
WEBOct 22, 2020 · We’ve created a new way to explore the fundamental constituents of the universe. 68. Ashley Mackenzie for Quanta Magazine. [Editor’s note: The full, interactive map is available below.] All of nature springs from a handful of components — the fundamental particles — that interact with one another in only a few different ways.
The Mystery at the Heart of Physics That Only Math Can Solve
WEBJun 10, 2021 · The accelerating effort to understand the mathematics of quantum field theory will have profound consequences for both math and physics. Olena Shmahalo/Quanta Magazine. Over the past century, quantum field theory has proved to be the single most sweeping and successful physical theory ever invented. It is an umbrella …
Physics News, Interviews and Columns | Quanta Magazine
WEBBy Ben Brubaker. August 28, 2024. While devising a new quantum algorithm, four researchers accidentally established a hard limit on entanglement. fundamental physics. By Steve Nadis. August 19, 2024. The largest-ever 3D map of the cosmos hints that the dark energy that’s fueling the universe’s expansion may be weakening.
What Is a Particle? - Quanta Magazine
WEBNov 12, 2020 · A Particle Is a ‘Collapsed Wave Function’ 1. The quest to understand nature’s fundamental building blocks began with the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus’s assertion that such things exist. Two millennia later, Isaac Newton and Christiaan Huygens debated whether light is made of particles or waves.
How Bell’s Theorem Proved ‘Spooky Action at a Distance’ Is Real
WEBJul 20, 2021 · The root of today’s quantum revolution was John Stewart Bell’s 1964 theorem showing that quantum mechanics really permits instantaneous connections between far-apart locations. We take for granted that an event in one part of the world cannot instantly affect what happens far away. This principle, which physicists call locality, was long ...
How the Physics of Resonance Shapes Reality | Quanta Magazine
WEBJan 26, 2022 · Here’s how the same effect manifests in such varied settings, from everyday life down to the smallest scales. In its simplest form, resonance occurs when an object experiences an oscillating force that’s close to one of its “natural” frequencies, at which it easily oscillates. That objects have natural frequencies “is one of the ...
A Physicist’s Physicist Ponders the Nature of Reality
WEBNov 28, 2017 · Jean Sweep for Quanta Magazine. Among the brilliant theorists cloistered in the quiet woodside campus of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, Edward Witten stands out as a kind of high priest. The sole physicist ever to win the Fields Medal, mathematics’ premier prize, Witten is also known for discovering M-theory, the ...
Quantum Tunnels Show How Particles Can Break the Speed of Light
WEBOct 20, 2020 · The trouble was that the answer didn’t make sense. The first tentative calculation of tunneling time appeared in print in 1932. Even earlier stabs might have been made in private, but “when you get an answer you can’t make sense of, you don’t publish it,” noted Aephraim Steinberg, a physicist at the University of Toronto.. It wasn’t until 1962 …
A New Physics Theory of Life - Quanta Magazine
WEBJan 22, 2014 · An MIT physicist has proposed the provocative idea that life exists because the law of increasing entropy drives matter to acquire lifelike physical properties. Jeremy England, a 31-year-old physicist at MIT, thinks he has found the underlying physics driving the origin and evolution of life. Katherine Taylor for Quanta Magazine.
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