To capture higher-definition and sharper images of cosmological objects, astronomers sometimes combine the data collected by ...

Henry Yuen is developing a new mathematical language to describe problems whose inputs and outputs aren’t ordinary numbers.

Scientists are a step closer to unraveling the mysterious forces of the universe after working out how to measure gravity on a microscopic level. Experts have never fully understood how the force that ...

Physicists at Heidelberg University have developed a new theory that finally unites two long-standing and seemingly ...

Viruses exist at the boundary between living and non-living matter, while skin is a living interface between physics and ...

A RECENT GROUNDBREAKING EXPERIMENT in which anesthesia was administered to rats has convinced scientists that tiny structures in the rodents’ brains are responsible for the experience of consciousness ...

In July 1925, physicist Werner Heisenberg wrote a letter to Wolfgang Pauli sharing his new ideas about what would eventually become known as quantum theory. A hundred years later, that theory has been ...

Scientists test Einstein’s quantum challenge with one atom, directly measuring when photon paths erase interference stripes.

At the smallest scales of nature, the rules of the world shift in ways that can feel unsettling and beautiful at the same ...

In the deadly game Russian roulette, a player loads a gun with a single bullet, spins the cylinder to randomize the bullet’s position, and turns the potentially lethal weapon on their own self. But in ...

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 ...

A century ago, science went quantum. To celebrate, physicists are throwing a global, year-long party. In 1925, quantum mechanics, the scientific theory that describes the unintuitive rules of physics ...