Quantum physics

The Industrial Revolution brought us the laws of thermodynamics, and new ideas about work, energy and efficiency. In this episode, co-host Steven Strogatz speaks with theoretical physicist Nicole Yunger Halpern about what these concepts might mean in the age of quantum mechanics.

While devising a new quantum algorithm, four researchers accidentally established a hard limit on entanglement.

Carbon dioxide’s powerful heat-trapping effect has been traced to a quirk of its quantum structure. The finding may explain climate change better than any computer model.

Experiments that test physics and philosophy "as a single whole" may be our only route to surefire knowledge about the universe.

One of the quantum fields that fills the universe is special because its default value seems poised to eventually change, changing everything.

Electrons have been seen uniting into entities with fractions of electric charge, this time without a magnetic field coaxing them into it.

Particle physicists in search of the next theory of reality are consulting a mathematical structure that they know will never fail: a table of possibilities known as the S-matrix.

Alex Sushkov is updating an old technology with new quantum tricks in hopes of sensing the magnetic influence of dark matter.

Scientists are pursuing materials that can conduct electricity with perfect efficiency under ambient conditions. In this episode, the physicist Siddharth Shanker Saxena tells co-host Janna Levin about what makes this hunt so difficult and consequential.