Maths and science featured strongly in the 2018 Australian of the Year Awards. Along with physicist Michelle Simmons, maths teacher Eddie Woo and biologist Graham Farquhar were recognised.
A future that continues to have increasingly fast computing depends on quantum physics – but research is showing that there are limits to how fast quantum computers can go.
As companies make quantum computers available through their cloud services, take a look at what it means for computing to move beyond classical mechanics and into quantum physics.
Many scientists thought it was impossible, but one team has finally done it. They say operating their quantum computer is just like playing a game of Pacman.
Forget solid, liquid, gas. This research used advanced math to theorize about topological phases of matter. And over the years experiments with matter and cold atoms have been validating the ideas.
Much of the current research in quantum computing involves work at close to absolute zero. A simple breakthough with an everyday material could see them work at more acceptable temperatures.
The information paradox is one of the great mysteries in our understanding of black holes. But has the famous theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking found the solution?
As hackers get more sophisticated in their cyber crime efforts we need to look to new technology to make our systems more secure, and potentially unhackable. So how can quantum physics help?
It’s a century-old debate: what is the meaning of the wave function, the central object of quantum mechanics? Is Schrödinger’s cat really dead and alive? I was recently involved in an experiment conducted…
Decades of data security research have brought us highly reliable, standardized tools for common tasks such as digital signatures and encryption. But hackers are constantly working to crack data security…
Parallel universes – worlds where the dinosaur-killing asteroid never hit, or where Australia was colonised by the Portuguese – are a staple of science fiction. But are they real? In a radical paper published…
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…
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 brilliant…
Frenchman Serge Haroche and American David Wineland have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in what researchers in the field say is long overdue recognition. Through their ingenious laboratory methods…
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…