quantum electrodynamics – Quanta Magazine

How to Tame the Endless Infinities Hiding in the Heart of Particle Physics

Charlie Wood — Thu, 06 Apr 2023 14:30:04 +0000

The secret to fixing a fatal flaw at the heart of quantum theory may lie in three obscure textbooks from the 1980s. But physicists can be forgiven for overlooking the potentially transformative ideas within, as the volumes appear simultaneously amateurish and intimidating. The few physical copies that exist of Jean Écalle’s magnum opus look like little more than glorified photocopies.

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How the Physics of Nothing Underlies Everything

Charlie Wood — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 13:32:15 +0000

Millennia ago, Aristotle asserted that nature abhors a vacuum, reasoning that objects would fly through truly empty space at impossible speeds. In 1277, the French bishop Etienne Tempier shot back, declaring that God could do anything, even create a vacuum. Then a mere scientist pulled it off. Otto von Guericke invented a pump to suck the air from within a hollow copper sphere...

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Where Do Space, Time and Gravity Come From?

Steven Strogatz — Wed, 04 May 2022 18:00:22 +0000

General relativity and quantum mechanics are the two most successful conceptual breakthroughs of modern physics, but Einstein’s description of gravity as a curvature in space-time doesn’t easily mesh with a universe made up of quantum wavefunctions. Recent work that tries to bring those theories together is revealing some mind-bending truths. In this episode, the physicist and author Sean Carroll...

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Nathan Seiberg on How Math Might Complete the Ultimate Physics Theory

Kevin Hartnett — Thu, 24 Jun 2021 14:44:03 +0000

Nathan Seiberg, 64, still does a lot of the electrical work and even some of the plumbing around his house in Princeton, New Jersey. It’s an interest he developed as a kid growing up in Israel, where he tinkered with his car and built a radio. “I was always fascinated by solving problems and understanding how things work,” he said. Seiberg’s professional career has been about problem solving, too...

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Mathematicians Prove 2D Version of Quantum Gravity Really Works

Charlie Wood — Thu, 17 Jun 2021 13:56:28 +0000

Alexander Polyakov, a theoretical physicist now at Princeton University, caught a glimpse of the future of quantum theory in 1981. A range of mysteries, from the wiggling of strings to the binding of quarks into protons, demanded a new mathematical tool whose silhouette he could just make out. “There are methods and formulae in science which serve as master keys to many apparently different...

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