The physics of the microrealm involves two famous and bizarre concepts: The first is that prior to observation, it is impossible to know with certainty the outcome of a measurement on a particle; ...

Three's company: interference patterns for one to four slits (expand for full image) A group of physicists in Austria has directed a beam of large molecules at a series of extremely narrow slits to ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about physics, science, academia, and pop culture. When I teach or give talks about relativity, one of my regular angles ...

Record-breaking experiment shows that a cluster of thousands of atoms can act like a wave as well as a particle.

Scientists created quantum superposition states at temperatures up to 60 times hotter than their environment, challenging the assumption that quantum effects require extreme cold. This discovery could ...

PHYSICS HAS A problem. In general relativity, time is entwined with space. It is relative, depending on speed or gravity. In quantum mechanics, however, time is an absolute. It is a smooth background ...

Topological defects are encountered in fields ranging from condensed-matter physics to cosmology. These broken-symmetry objects are intrinsically local, but theoretical work now suggests that ...