Physics

Oct 28th, 2025 - For a fraction of a second after the big bang occurred 13.8 billion years ago, most physicists believe, the newborn universe dramatically ballooned in size, jumping from being smaller than a proton to being bigger than a softball. Such an exponential expansion may seem minor, but it is equivalent to a grape in the palm of your hand swelling to become tens of thousands of times larger than the observable universe. Known as cosmic inflation , this strange, fleeting period is usually considered to ... [Read More]

Oct 28th, 2025 - Many space-lovers know the phrase "We are all made of star stuff." And it's true — our planet formed from the dust cloud left over from the formation of our Sun, and from the planet, all life. That cloud, in turn, was born from the remnants of past generations of stars. But the elements that stars produce over the course of their lives are just one part of the story. The rest of the story — involving stars' apocalyptic deaths — is even more exciting. Our story begins as all ... [Read More]

Oct 28th, 2025 - Combining a quantum-inspired algorithm and quantum information processing technologies could enable researchers to measure masses of cosmic objects that bend light almost imperceptibly Quantum physics may be the secret ingredient for understanding cosmic objects that our telescopes cannot show us in detail, or at all. To understand space, we collect and analyse light that travels from objects like stars into our telescopes, but that light doesn't always travel in straight lines. Often, as it ... [Read More]

Oct 27th, 2025 - Researchers at Forschungszentrum Jülich, together with international collaborators, have demonstrated for the first time that memristors—novel nanoscale switching devices—can provide stable resistance values directly linked to fundamental constants of nature. This paves the way for electrical units such as electrical resistance to be traced back far more simply and directly than it has been possible to date. By contrast, conventional, quantum-based measurement technology is so ... [Read More]

Oct 27th, 2025 - Today's computers store information in magnetic hard drives, keeping files safe even when the device is powered off. But to run programs and process information, computers rely on electricity. Each calculation requires a transfer of information between the electric and magnetic systems. This back-and-forth is a major bottleneck in the speed of modern computing. Devices that integrate magnetic components directly into computing logic would remove this limitation and allow computers to perform ... [Read More]

Oct 27th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google A new idea revives a 19th-century vision with a modern twist: unusual cosmic "knots" in the newborn universe may have helped nudge reality toward matter, not antimatter. In this picture, tangled loops of fields formed just after the Big Bang . After briefly dominating, they then collapsed in ways that left a tiny surplus of matter – the seed for everything from stars to people. The research, published in the journal Physical Review Letters , comes from a team in ... [Read More]

Oct 27th, 2025 - Electrocatalytic transformations not only require electrical energy—they also need a reliable middleman to spark the desired chemical reaction. Surface metal-hydrogen intermediates can effectively produce value-added chemicals and energy conversion, but, given their low concentration and fleeting lifespan, they are difficult to characterize or study in depth, especially at the nanoscale. Now, Cornell researchers have used single-molecule super-resolution reaction imaging to gain a clearer ... [Read More]

Oct 26th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Physicists in Vienna rewound a single photon's state with over 95 percent accuracy. The result "rewinds" the time of a quantum system to an earlier moment without learning what happened in between. This happened inside a standard lab, not a sci-fi set. The team used light as the test case and focused on the smallest possible system that still carries information. Quantum time rewind The work was led by Philip Walther at the University of Vienna , whose group focuses on ... [Read More]

Oct 10th, 2025 - A research team led by Prof. Lin Yiheng from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), collaborating with Prof. Yuan Haidong from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, succeeded in generating multipartite quantum entangled states across two, three, and five modes using controlled dissipation as a resource. Their study is in Science Advances . Multimode entanglement is a key resource in quantum computation, communication, simulation, and sensing. One of the major challenges in ... [Read More]

Oct 10th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Quantum computing is full of ideas that sound great until you try to build them. A new experiment now shows a way to move quantum data to exactly where it is needed. It reports 95.3 % success on that routing task in the lab, which is strong enough to take notice. Instead of treating memory as an afterthought, the team built a router that can direct a quantum signal based on a quantum address. That ability is central to designs for quantum random access memory ( QRAM ). It ... [Read More]

Oct 8th, 2025 - Reseachers uses quantum simulations to vizualize the shape of a photon emitted by a single nanoparticle -- in this case, it's lemon-shaped. When we look at the world around us, all that we see is thanks to light. It reflects, refracts, and interacts, carrying shape and depth from the objects it touches. But what about light itself? Physicists have now visualized the simulated shape of a photon (the smallest unit of light) emitted from the surface of a nanoparticle using a novel theoretical ... [Read More]

Oct 3rd, 2025 - Engineers have developed a new coating technique that will help make quantum light sources more precise and consistent. The team used an organic molecule called PTCDA to coat a semiconductor and caused it to release single photons at a time. Each photon also had identical energies, which is required if quantum technologies are to function. The researchers hope these reliable semiconductors will improve the performance of quantum computers. "The big idea is that we want to go from individual ... [Read More]

Oct 3rd, 2025 - By Florian Neukart, Leiden University Share What if the universe remembers? A bold new framework proposes that spacetime acts as a quantum memory. For over a hundred years, physics has rested on two foundational theories. Einstein's general relativity describes gravity as the curvature of space and time, while quantum mechanics governs the behavior of particles and fields. Each theory is highly successful within its own domain, yet combining them leads to contradictions, particularly in ... [Read More]

Oct 2nd, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google A single particle of light can behave in surprising ways, but it still follows the strict rules of physics. A new experiment shows that even when one photon is split into two, the total angular momentum remains exactly the same. The work tested conservation at the smallest possible scale and did not cut corners. Lead author Lea Kopf of Tampere University , and colleagues built a setup sensitive enough to catch only a few successful events out of billions. Split photons ... [Read More]

Oct 1st, 2025 - A laser-controlled array of atoms may hold the key to scalable quantum computing In a Caltech lab, a computer screen showed thousands of tiny points of light—each one a single atom, held in place by laser beams. This striking image revealed 6,100 stable quantum bits, or qubits. It's the largest neutral-atom array ever created and a key achievement for quantum computing. The previous record for a neutral atom array was just 1,180 qubits. "This is an exciting moment for neutral-atom quantum ... [Read More]

Sep 30th, 2025 - By Light Publishing Center Share A research team has discovered how to finely control Dirac plasmon polaritons in topological insulator metamaterials , overcoming long-standing challenges in the terahertz range. In today's world of advanced nanotechnology, the ability to control light at extremely small scales is essential for breakthroughs in faster data transfer, ultra-sensitive detection systems, and next-generation imaging technologies. At the heart of this frontier are Dirac plasmon ... [Read More]