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Researchers at Microsoft say they have created elusive quasiparticles called Majorana zero modes – but scientists outside the company are sceptical Microsoft researchers have made a controversial claim that they have seen evidence of an elusive particle that could solve some of the biggest headaches in quantum computing, but some experts are questioning the discovery. Quantum computers process information using quantum bits, or qubits, but current iterations can be prone to error. “What the field needs is a new kind of qubit,” says Chetan Nayak at Microsoft Quantum. He and his colleagues say they have taken a significant step...

1. A cat can be dead and alive Obviously, a cat is nothing like an individual photon in a controlled lab environment, it is much bigger and more complex. Any coherence that the trillions upon trillions of atoms that make up the cat might have with each other is extremely short-lived. This does not mean that quantum coherence is impossible in biological systems, just that it generally won't apply to big creatures such as cats or a human. 2. Simple analogies can explain entanglement Quantum particles are just mysteriously correlated in ways we can't describe with everyday logic or language...

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – A team of University of Arkansas physicists has successfully developed a circuit capable of capturing graphene's thermal motion and converting it into an electrical current. “An energy-harvesting circuit based on graphene could be incorporated into a chip to provide clean, limitless, low-voltage power for small devices or sensors,” said Paul Thibado, professor of physics and lead researcher in the discovery.The findings, titled "Fluctuation-induced current from freestanding graphene," and published in the journal Physical Review E, are proof of a theory the physicists developed at the U of A three years ago that freestanding graphene — a single...

In perhaps his most famous quip of all time, celebrated physicist Richard Feynman once remarked, when speaking about new discoveries, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.” When you do science yourself, engaging in the process of research and inquiry, there are many ways you can become your own worst enemy. If you’re the one proposing a new idea, you must avoid falling into the trap of becoming enamored with it; if you do, you run the risk of choosing to emphasize only the results that support it, while discounting...

Researchers build circuit that harnessed the atomic motion of graphene to generate an electrical current that could lead to a chip to replace batteries. ============================================================================ A team of University of Arkansas physicists has successfully developed a circuit capable of capturing graphene’s thermal motion and converting it into an electrical current. “An energy-harvesting circuit based on graphene could be incorporated into a chip to provide clean, limitless, low-voltage power for small devices or sensors,” said Paul Thibado, professor of physics and lead researcher in the discovery. The findings, published in the journal Physical Review E, are proof of a theory the...

After the first-ever image of a black hole confirmed theories posited by Einstein, it's the late scientist Stephen Hawking's turn to have parts of his life's work vindicated. In a paper published in Nature, scientists say that have verified the scientist's namesake theory, Hawking Radiation, which hypothesized that black holes emit radiation from their surfaces due to a mix of different factors regarding quantum physics and gravity. To verify the theory, scientists at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology turned to what sounds like mad science: creating their own black hole.

Jan 28, 1985: I was one of the accident investigators. NASA knew there were serious problems but launched anyway. @NASA wanted publicity & the press was leaving after waiting a couple days. Well, they got their publicity. #Challenger #Challengeraccident

Richard Phillips Feynman, who was born 100 years ago today, made his mark with contributions to particle physics, superfluidity, and quantum electrodynamics—the last of which won him the 1965 Nobel Prize. That honor alone would have been enough to guarantee him a place in the history of science...... Yet Feynman’s posthumous reputation rests not just on his aptitude for physics but also on his playful personality. He’s known for pulling pranks at Los Alamos, trying his hand at a variety of quirky hobbies, and taking road trips in a Dodge Tradesman Maxivan...... When Feynman pointed out the security gap at...

An Iranian nuclear scientist was killed by a remote-controlled bomb in Tehran today. The victim was identified as Professor Massoud Mohammadi, who worked at Tehran University. He was killed near his home in a northern part of the capital by a booby-trapped motorcycle. A senior Interior Ministry official, Mehdi Mohammadifar, said the motive for the bombing was under investigation. "Apparently this man was a university professor who was killed close to his home this morning in an explosion," Mr Mohammadifar said. The official IRNA news agency said it was not yet clear how many people were killed in the blast,...

Caltech and The Feynman Lectures Website are pleased to present this online edition of The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Now, anyone with internet access and a web browser can enjoy reading a high quality up-to-date copy of Feynman's legendary lectures.

TODAY’S POST IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE PHYSICS DEPARTMENT (WITH SPECIAL THANKS TO THE ENGLISH EDPARTMENT).Rush wondered aloud yesterday about the Iran nuclear deal - ironically enough - approved by our esteemed body politic on the day before 9/11: This is just... It's inexplicable.  The whole thing is inexplicable.  There is so much that doesn't make any sense anymore.  So much in our politics that's happening every day doesn't make sense to people anymore.  And no matter how artful you are at explaining it, it still doesn't make sense.  It doesn't make sense because it appears that we've lost...

A cornerstone of physics may require a rethink if findings at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are confirmed. Recent experiments suggest that the most rigorous predictions based on the fundamental theory of electromagnetism—one of the four fundamental forces in the universe, and harnessed in all electronic devices—may not accurately account for the behavior of atoms in exotic, highly charged states. The theory in question is known as quantum electrodynamics, or QED, which physicists have held in high regard for decades because of its excellent track record describing electromagnetism's effects on matter. In particular, QED has been especially...

Nobel Prize-winning and eccentric physicist Richard Feynman has been called a buffoon and a magician, but is lauded as a man who could make science accessible and interesting for all. When I was a child I desperately wanted to be a scientist, but then it all went wrong. Unfortunately, during the early years of my secondary school education, science became joyless. It was a subject that seemed disjointed from the world even though it is the method that attempts to explain the world and the universe. If only it were possible to place an automaton Richard Feynman in every school....

RICHARD FEYNMAN, Nobel laureate and physicist extraordinaire, called it a “magic number” and its value “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics”. The number he was referring to, which goes by the symbol alpha and the rather more long-winded name of the fine-structure constant, is magic indeed. If it were a mere 4% bigger or smaller than it is, stars would not be able to sustain the nuclear reactions that synthesise carbon and oxygen atoms. One consequence would be that squishy, carbon-based life would not exist. Why alpha takes on the precise value it does, so delicately fine-tuned for...

“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts” is how the great Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman defined science. “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts” is how the great Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman defined science in his article “What is Science?” Feynman emphasized this definition by repeating it in a stand-alone sentence in extra large typeface in his article.  (Feynman’s essay is available online, but behind a subscription wall: The Physics Teacher (1969) volume 7, starting page 313.)Immediately after his definition of science, Feynman wrote: “When someone says, ‘Science teaches such and such,’ he is...

It was at Caltech that Gell-Mann helped to lay the foundations for our understanding of the components that make up matter. He drafted a blueprint of subatomic physics that he called the Eightfold Way. At the time, physicists understood that atoms are constructed from protons and neutrons, but they had also found many other mysterious particles. The Eightfold Way made sense of this baffling menagerie, finding within it places for particles never even imagined. The work was so important that it netted Gell-Mann a Nobel Prize in 1969. In 1984 Gell-Mann pursued his dream of working in other fields by...