This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American Which is more fundamental, mind or matter?

In 1697, Newton solved a challenge overnight — but the real breakthrough came from a deeper idea that would outlive them all. From Snell’s Law and the brachistochrone curve to F = ma and quantum ...

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

Gravity is one of four fundamental interactions. The most precise description of this force is still provided by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, published in 1915, an entirely classical ...

Einstein and the Quantum Revolutions Alain Aspect Univ. Chicago Press (2024) French physicist Alain Aspect is a pioneer in ‘quantum entanglement’ — connections between the quantum properties of ...

At long last, a unified theory combining gravity with the other fundamental forces—electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces—is within reach. Bringing gravity into the fold has been the ...

Quantum mechanics and general relativity are the two pinnacles of 20th-century physics. In their respective fields, scientists have demonstrated time and time again how correct these theories are.

Quantum entanglement can link two objects even when they are separated by extremely large distances. But a new study has found a limit at which such quantum correlations stop – and surprisingly, ...

You might say it all started with a spot of hay fever. In June 1925, a young physicist named Werner Heisenberg retreated to the barren island of Helgoland in the North Sea, seeking respite from his ...

Imagine a physicist observing a quantum system whose behavior is akin to a coin toss: it could come up heads or tails. They perform the quantum coin toss and see heads. Could they be certain that ...