The ancient Greeks speculated that it might be air, fire or water. A century ago, physicists felt sure it was the atom. Today, we believe that the deepest layer of reality is populated by a diverse ...

The particles that are in an atom: protons, neutrons and electrons The particles that are in protons and neutrons: quarks The four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force and ...

Mathematicians have found a way to transform an unproductive quantum computing approach by reviving a class of previously discarded particles. Now, in a new study published in the journal Nature ...

Subnuclear physics obeys the laws of quantum mechanics, which are quite a far cry from those of classical mechanics we are accustomed to. For that reason, one might be inclined to believe that ...

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What makes something quantum? This question has kept a small but dedicated fraction of the world's population—most of them ...

Quantum particles have a social life, of a sort. They interact and form relationships with each other, and one of the most ...

Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...

Trust, but verify: Random number generation is a serious matter in modern computing. Most systems rely on a purely hardware-based approach to RNG, but the process is essentially impossible to verify ...

Aaron Lauda has been exploring an area of mathematics that most physicists have seen little use for, wondering if it might have practical applications. In a twist even he didn’t expect, it turns out ...