The Best Articles in Physics

Schrodinger's Cat is a hypothetical thought experiment created in 1935 by a man who loved physics and hated cats.

The more closely we observe the present moment, the more amorphous it becomes.

The enigmatic saga of one of astrophysics' most wanted particles.

A multitude of experiments have shown the mysterious phenomena of quantum mechanics to be how the universe functions. The scientists behind these experiments won the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics.

Quantum bits (aka qubits), the reader is assured, are somehow "entangled" such that they rely on one another. If more detail is needed, we're told entanglement links qubits no matter how far apart they are—so long as the qubits are “coherent.” This hardly helps! So let's try a different approach.

When a theory breaks, you learn how to build it better.

«ASK WEIRD QUESTIONS Einstein had a wild imagination. He asked himself questions like: What would he feel if he rode an elevator through outer space? What would he see if he chased a beam of light?»

You're six miles up, alone and falling without a parachute. Though the odds are long, a small number of people have found themselves in similar situations—and lived to tell the tale.

Diffusion models generate incredible images by learning to reverse the process that, among other things, causes ink to spread through water.

Physics models and real-world experiments help keep bubbles from popping.

The quantum world defies our ability to describe it in words. Human experience does not prepare us for its weirdness and uncertainty.

Satellite navigation systems for lunar settlements will require local atomic clocks. Scientists are working out what time they will keep.

Ordinarily, to measure an object we must interact with it in some way.

A concept known as "wave-particle duality" famously applies to light. But it also applies to all matter — including you.

The real reason that we cannot travel faster than light speed is far more interesting than the textbook answer.

«On the bright side, now that you know about spacetime, the next time your boss gets on your case for just sitting there, you can tell them that they are being unreasonable. You’re moving as fast as possible.»

Albert Einstein’s ideas about space-time aren’t exactly intuitive, and they aren’t exactly Einstein’s, either.

Even guardians of America's atomic clocks say time doesn't work the way we think it does.

«It's my belief that the forward passage of time is mostly a human construct," he says. "From a physics sense, it doesn't have that much value."»

Thanks to observations of gravitational waves recorded in 2017, we now know that gravity and light travel at the same speed.

The unprecedented experiment explores the possibility that space-time somehow emerges from quantum information, even as the work’s interpretation remains disputed.

The aesthetics of the Atomic Age helped whitewash the threat of nuclear disaster

Interactive article explaining how sound works.

The past and the future are tightly linked in conventional quantum mechanics. Perhaps too tightly. A tweak to the theory could let quantum possibilities increase as space expands.

Is science absolute? Its truths and discoveries guide us towards the nature of reality, but we must always remain open-minded to revisions.