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Newton’s first law says that objects move at constant speeds until a force affects them

Newton’s first law appears to break down in the quantum realm

21 July 2023

Newton’s first law of motion says that particles move in straight lines unless influenced by a force but a new experiment shows that the quantum version of that assumption fails for quantum particles of light

Extremely cold drop of helium can be levitated forever

9 June 2023

A drop of very cold liquid helium can be made to float for an indefinitely long time using strong magnets and quantum effects

Calcium ions are released through the triangular funnel and caught by electric potentials on top of the metallic chip

2D crystal of ultracold charged atoms is biggest ever created

24 April 2023

More than 100 charged calcium atoms chilled to extremely low temperatures have been arranged into a two-dimensional crystal, which could be used for studying quantum materials or building quantum computations

2B77TB8 3D rendering of abstract digital waves and bright square particles in space. Futuristic background made of dots, particles and mesh

A miniature universe shows particles may emerge out of empty space

9 November 2022

A first-of-its-kind experiment simulating the cosmos with ultracold potassium atoms suggests that in a curved, expanding universe pairs of particles pop up out of empty space

Q1: Photograph of the silicon quantum circuit being connected to a circuit board in preparation for measurement. (credit: Serwan Asaad)

Using microwave beams could let quantum computers be small but mighty

13 August 2021

A decades-old theory to simplify silicon quantum processors has been shown to work, potentially paving the way for vastly more powerful quantum devices

Neutrinos change their identities and we don't know why

31 March 2021

The standard model of particle physics explains many things, but the strange behaviour of neutrinos isn't one of them, writes Chanda Prescod-Weinstein