Physicists are quietly rewriting the rulebook for how we might cross the gulf between stars, not by bolting bigger rockets to ...

Using ultracold atoms and laser light, researchers recreated the behavior of a Josephson junction—an essential component of ...

"Quantum" may seem like a useless buzzword, but quantum computing is a real thing, and it's actually understandable even if ...

Ultracold atoms have successfully mimicked a fundamental quantum effect normally found in electronic circuits.

Physicists have transformed a decades-old technique for simplifying quantum equations into a reusable, user-friendly "conversion table" that works on a laptop and returns results within hours. When ...

An experiment with ultracold atoms reveals that a strongly driven quantum system doesn’t always heat up as expected. In daily ...

More than 200 years ago, Count Rumford showed that heat isn’t a mysterious substance but something you can generate endlessly ...

Physicists have struggled to understand the nature of time since the field began. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Time may not be ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In the fall of 2022, a Princeton University graduate student named Carolina Figueiredo stumbled onto a massive coincidence. She ...

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 ...