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How to beat your family at board games with quantum tricks

How to beat your family at board games with quantum tricks

14 December 2022

Quantum pseudotelepathy is just one of the party tricks that can take the bored out of board games this Christmas, as Philip Ball explains


The exotic quantum effects found hiding inside ultra-thin materials

The exotic quantum effects found hiding inside ultra-thin materials

30 November 2022

Superconductivity, fractional charges and magnetic vortices are just some of the weird quantum phenomena lurking in materials like graphene when they get skewed


A rethink of cause and effect could help when things get complicated

A rethink of cause and effect could help when things get complicated

25 May 2022

Some scientists insist that the cause of all things exists at the most fundamental level, even in systems as complex as brains and people. What if it isn't so?


What putting big things in quantum states can tell us about reality

What putting big things in quantum states can tell us about reality

25 August 2021

In principle, there should be no limit on how large objects can get and still display quantum behaviour like superpositions. Physicists testing the idea hope to reveal clues about quantum gravity


R42MA6 Advance of Quantum Wave

Quantum Darwinism: Can evolutionary theory explain objective reality?

25 August 2021

Quantum phenomena “wash out” as particles interact with the environment, but classical properties survive. Are they selected in a process analogous to evolution by natural selection?


Rules of attraction: Strange chemical bonds that defy the textbooks

Rules of attraction: Strange chemical bonds that defy the textbooks

19 May 2021

Our most fundamental ideas about how atoms and molecules stick together are changing. That is great news for creating new materials, but brings fresh challenges to understanding the world around us


Lighting fires in space is helping us make greener energy on Earth

Lighting fires in space is helping us make greener energy on Earth

16 September 2020

Flames reveal their secret workings when freed from the effects of gravity, so burning things in space may help us get more energy from less fuel back on Earth


How a new twist on quantum theory could solve its biggest mystery

How a new twist on quantum theory could solve its biggest mystery

25 March 2020

The "wave function collapse" transforms vague clouds of quantum possibilities into the physical reality we know – but no one knows how. New experiments are finally revealing reality in the making


Could vacuum airships go from steampunk fantasy to 21st century skies?

Could vacuum airships go from steampunk fantasy to 21st century skies?

18 December 2019

First imagined in the 17th century, blimps borne aloft by nothing but nothing are finally ready for lift off, carrying goods and even passengers in gondolas in the clouds


Mendeleev

The true story of the birth of the periodic table, 150 years ago

26 February 2019

Contrary to the myth, Dmitri Mendeleev's great idea didn't come to him in a dream. Here's the real story of the invention and the revolution that followed


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