When you mix science with speculation, you get speculation. But the underlying science is still real. Whenever you hear the phrase, “it’s just a theory,” it should trigger alarm bells in […]

Going to smaller and smaller distance scales reveals more fundamental views of nature, which means if we can understand and describe the smallest scales, we can build our way to […]

Hidden variables aren’t ruled out, but they can’t get rid of quantum weirdness. Ever since the discovery of the bizarre behavior of quantum systems, we’ve been forced to reckon with […]

Do they have real, observable effects, or are they merely calculational tools?

We can describe what we see happening, but we don’t understand why. Despite our vast cosmic knowledge, enormous unknowns remain. The quantum fluctuations inherent to space, stretched across the Universe […]

And can we devise an experiment to tell, even when we aren’t looking? One of the most bizarre aspects of quantum physics is that the fundamental entities that make up the […]

The act of observing doesn’t just determine a previously indeterminate state, but can destroy information, too. Imagine that you’re a scientist attempting to understand reality at a fundamental level. How […]

In our Universe, a left hand reflected in a mirror or pond appears to be a right hand. While most of the laws of nature are symmetric under reflections, obeying […]

No matter how accurately you place two Plinko chips, you cannot count on the same outcome twice. Of all the pricing games on the iconic television show The Price Is Right, […]

We still don’t know how the information encoded onto it gets out. No matter what you do in the Universe, its overall entropy always increases. Even when we put things in […]

If we waited long enough, would even protons themselves decay? There are certain things in the Universe that, if you leave them alone for long enough, they’ll eventually decay away. […]

Forgetting them, at any step, can lead to unscientific conclusions. No one, not even the smartest among us, were competent scientists from the outset. The concept of science is simple […]

It’s perhaps the most famous thought experiment in all of physics, but is full of popular myths and misconceptions. One of the most bizarre ideas about the quantum Universe is […]

There’s some amazing science happening at the South Pole, but some very grandiose claims being made. What’s actually going on? For some of us, the idea of parallel Universes spark our […]

It should be just as sticky (or non-sticky) as normal matter. Here’s how we know. Not only here on Earth, but everywhere in the Universe that we look, we find structures […]

It isn’t just that mass and energy are equivalent and interchangeable. It tells us something fundamental about mass itself. Of all the equations that we use to describe the Universe, perhaps […]

Few scientific ideas have been as polarizing as string theory. There are good reasons to both love it and hate it. String theory is perhaps the most controversial big idea in […]

It’s a pipe dream that violates the laws of physics, and not even quantum mechanics can give us a way out. One of the most fundamental rules of physics, undisputed since […]

The quest for the ultimate vacuum just got taken to the next level thanks to a new technique: the quantum squeezer. One of the most understated frontiers in all of […]

When you hear ‘quantum,’ you probably think of splitting everything into discrete, indivisible chunks. That’s not necessarily right. If you want to learn what the Universe is made out of […]

A fully programmable quantum computer that can outperform any classical computer is right at the edge of today’s technology. Earlier this month, a new story leaked out: Google, one of […]

The Sudbury neutrino observatory, which was instrumental in demonstrating neutrino oscillations and the massiveness of neutrinos. With additional results from atmospheric, solar, and terrestrial observatories and experiments, we may not […]

All protons have the same exact mass as every other proton. For particles like the Higgs boson, this isn’t true. One of the most puzzling aspects of quantum physics is how […]

It’s perhaps the most famous equation of all, with lessons about reality for every one of us. If you’ve ever heard of Albert Einstein, chances are you know at least one […]

The laws of physics are not time-reversal invariant. Here’s how we know. No matter when, where, or what you are in the Universe, you experience time in only one direction: forwards. […]

The quest for a quantum theory of gravity is the holy grail of physics. Here’s why it’s murkier than anyone expected. If you want to fully describe how the Universe […]

The Planck length is a lot smaller than anything we’ve ever accessed. But is it a true limit? If you wanted to understand how our Universe operates, you’d have to examine […]

Everything on Earth is made of atoms and their building blocks. Without this one rule, they’d never make anything interesting. Take a look around you at everything on Earth. If […]

And if they exist, are there alternate-reality versions of you out there, too? You’ve likely imagined it before: another Universe out there, just like this one, where all the random events […]

And why Einstein’s quest for unification was doomed from the start. If you wanted to answer the question of what’s truly fundamental in this Universe, you’d need to investigate matter and […]