Striving for agreement between theory and experiment and pushing the boundaries of precision are important parts of the scientific process.
With each step in this process we move closer to enlightenment…
Sometimes the juiciest treats come in small packages.
Dylan Parker
Most people outside the esoteric worlds of little-science physics (aka quantum mechanics) and big-science physics (aka cosmology) will at some point realise both worlds fly in the face of intuition.
Why…
Transistors have continued shrinking, but how much further can they go?
Jenn and Tony Bot
It’s early morning, you’re preparing for the day ahead and thinking about life’s important conundrums.
Is there enough muesli left for the week? Do you have enough time to catch the bus? Are you going…
When you shine a torch into a dusty room, not all the photons reach their destination.
Simon Greig (xrrr)
All of the light we see around us comes in chunks of energy known as photons. As well as making up light, photons can be used to carry and process information and their quantum properties make possible…
A cat, or the superposition of an inordinate number of wave functions?
Blind Hen ⁑ Blind Höna
Whenever I see angry mobs reacting to the destruction of religious books it makes me think of Schrödinger, iPads and how we should interpret fundamentalist religious teachings in the digital era.
The…
Can you play a quantum game of tennis with just one court and one ball?
Javmorcas
You may have heard that this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Serge Haroche (from College de France) and David J. Wineland (from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology…
No matter which way you look at it, you can’t find out everything.
The Uncertainty Principle, introduced by Heisenberg in 1927, applies to observations of the properties of the quantum world, which is typically microscopic in scale. As I explained a few months ago, it…
“Most people just get used to the concept and get on with their lives.”
Roger McLassus
Our notion of reality is built on everyday experiences. But wave-particle duality is so strange that we are forced to re-examine our common conceptions.
Wave-particle duality refers to the fundamental…
Developments on the atomic scale are set to open a whole new world of problem solving.
~jjjohn~
Supercomputers have enabled breakthroughs in our ability to tackle a huge array of problems, from detailed studies of protein folding, to the dynamics of the Earth’s atmosphere and climate.
Current research…
When it comes to being “fortunate”, context is king.
kaibara87
By Neil Levy, The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health
Some people seem born lucky. Everything they touch turns to gold. Others are dogged by misfortune.
It’s not just people who might be lucky or unlucky – it can be single acts. When the ball hits a post…
We know they’re out there, and now we’re closer than ever to finding gravity waves.
NASA
Detecting gravity waves is a major goal for astrophysicists.
We know they should be there, but we haven’t found them yet. But today we are one step closer.
By literally squeezing light on a quantum level…
We know how to solve some big problems in physics, we just don’t have the power.
elvissa
Welcome to If I had a blank cheque … a series in which leading researchers reveal what they could (and would) do in their discipline if money were no object.
Today we hear from Dr Jonathan Carroll, Postdoctoral…
Have we reached the limit of how small computer hardware can be?
Mullenkedheim/Flickr
Ever noticed that computers become outdated remarkably quickly? It’s nice to have increasingly powerful computers available, and very profitable for the computer industry to have a new model available…
We’ve got the time, if you’ve got the theory.
h.koppdelaney/Flickr
By now we’re used to the idea that the world has four dimensions: three spatial and one temporal. But what if there were a fifth dimension – what would that dimension look like, and how would it relate…
Could this kitty be both dead and alive? Well, erm, you decide …
ihasb33r/Flickr
Quantum teleportation has been in the news before but last week Japanese and Australian scientists went one better, managing to teleport every physicist’s favourite feline: Schrödinger’s cat.
Before you…
Quantum mechanics (the theory of atoms, quarks and photons) is definitely weird and, thanks to the work I’m doing, it might be getting weirder.
Allow me to throw a quantum spanner in the works.
In the…
