Physics

A generation of physicists has referred to the dark energy that permeates the universe as “the cosmological constant.” Now the largest map of the cosmos to date hints that this mysterious energy has been changing over billions of years.

In the search for the most scalable hardware to use for quantum computers, qubits made of individual atoms are having a breakout moment.

Recent controversies bode ill for the effort to detect life on other planets by analyzing the gases in their atmospheres.

Long-anticipated experiments that use light to mimic gravity are revealing the distribution of energies, forces and pressures inside a subatomic particle for the first time.

Teleporting people through space is still science fiction. But quantum teleportation is dramatically different and entirely real. In this episode, Janna Levin interviews the theoretical physicist John Preskill about teleporting bits and the promise of quantum technology.

Researchers have shown that a problem relating to the energy of a quantum system is easy for quantum computers but hard for classical ones.

By mapping the largest structures in the universe in X-rays, cosmologists have found striking agreement with their standard theoretical model of how the universe evolves.

Time is all around us: in the language we use, in the memories we revisit and in our predictions of the future. But what exactly is it? The physicist and Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek joins Steve Strogatz to discuss the fundamental hallmarks of time.

A series of advances seemed to promise the impossible: the existence of quantum states that would never, ever fall into disarray. But physicists are now discovering that the pull of disorder may not be so easily overcome.