Physicists Use Quantum Mechanics to Pull...

<p>How do sellers decide how to price their goods? Competition should keep prices down, while collusion can rig higher prices (and break the law). On this week’s episode, host Samir Patel speaks with staff writer Ben Brubaker about how computer scientists are using game theory to ... Show More

<p>At first glance, studying the math of waves seems like it should be smooth sailing. But the equations that describe even the gentlest rolling waves are a mathematical nightmare to solve. On this week’s episode, host Samir Patel speaks with math staff writer Joseph Howlett why ... Show More

<p>Salvador Dalí, Thomas Edison and Edgar Allan Poe all took inspiration from the state between sleep and waking life. On this week’s episode, host Samir Patel speaks with biology staff writer Yasemin Saplakoglu about how brain systems dictate the strange transitions into and out ... Show More

An examination of some more advanced concepts of quantum mechanics, focusing on describing Dirac's bra-ket formulation of quantum theory. I discuss the formulation of quantum mechanics in terms of vectors in Hilbert spaces, Hermitian operators as corresponding to observables, ort ... Show More

<p>Aristotle argued almost 2,400 years ago that a perfect vacuum could never exist. Today, the concept of nothingness figures at least implicitly into almost every theory of modern physics. In this episode closing out season 2 of “The Joy of Why,” the theoretical physicist Isabel ... Show More

<p><span style="font-weight: 400">Quantum field theory may be the most successful scientific theory of all time, predicting  experimental results with stunning accuracy and advancing the study of higher dimensional mathematics. Yet, there’s also reason to believe that it is missi ... Show More

The 2022 Nobel Prize for Physics celebrated research that is underpinning a tech transformation 

<p>Quantum mechanics and general relativity are two of the most successful theories of science ever, but they don&apos;t necessarily fit together. Learn why physicists are trying so hard to discover a quantum theory of gravity, and why it&apos;s been such a challenge.<br/><br/>Fo ... Show More

Quantum mechanics is full of weird findings – for example, that systems widely separated can somehow still be correlated, and that a system may be in two different possible states at the same time. Entanglement and superposition, among other phenomena, have prompted debate since ... Show More

The secret to making a qubit for future quantum computers might depend on knowing how to tie knots in unusual materials, argues the physicist Charlie Marcus. The post Charlie Marcus Knows That Quantum Facts Aren’t Complicated first appeared on Quanta Magazine