Forgetting feels like a failure of attention, but physics treats it as a fundamental process with a measurable price. At the ...

Researchers at Google have used their Willow quantum computer to demonstrate that "quantum contextuality" may be a crucial ...

Quantum computers, systems that process information leveraging quantum mechanical effects, could soon outperform classical computers on some complex computational problems. These computers rely on ...

A century ago, the strange behavior of atoms and elementary particles led physicists to formulate a new theory of nature. That theory, quantum mechanics, found immediate success, proving its worth ...

One of the pieces of equipment for the quantum random number generator in the NIST Boulder laboratories. Very little in this life is truly random. A coin flip is influenced by the flipper’s force, its ...

In the 1960s, a group of physicists and historians began a massive project meant to catalogue and record the history of quantum physics. It was called Sources for History of Quantum Physics (SHQP). As ...

Every year, Santa Claus races around the globe in a matter of hours to bring presents to children all over the world.

We’re celebrating 180 years of Scientific American. Explore our legacy of discovery and look ahead to the future. This year is the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, according to ...

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, ...

A rift runs deep through the heart of physics. The general theory of relativity, which describes gravity, clashes with quantum physics. In an effort to seal that physics fissure, untold numbers of ...

Olival Freire Jr is a professor of physics and the history of physics at the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. What makes matter stable? Why are atoms as they are? Why do different materials vary ...