Two studies find that fundamental quantum constraints rule out a previously proposed neutrino-laser scheme. In last year’s proposal of a neutrino laser, the researchers sought to exploit the same ...

A ring of optical fiber can be made to host phenomena that originated in the realm of high-energy physics. Yang and his colleagues achieved their feat using a platform based on fiber ring resonators, ...

Figure 1: Barrios Hita and colleagues have explored a new path for developing a formulation of quantum theory that doesn’t rely on complex numbers [5]. In standard quantum theory, every physical ...

Before determining the correct quantum theory of gravity, researchers need to know if gravity is actually quantized. Experiments testing that assumption are now being developed. Quantum fluctuations ...

Measurements of the decay of the Higgs boson into muon–antimuon pairs provide evidence for the mechanism by which quarks and leptons acquire their mass. Figure 1: Display of a proton–proton collision ...

Figure 1: The shattering of glass is an archetypal fragmentation process. × When a solid object shatters or a liquid drop disintegrates, predicting the outcome seems at first hopelessly difficult. In ...

A Bose-Einstein condensate of radioactive atoms could turn into a source of intense, coherent, and directional neutrino beams, according to a theoretical proposal. Figure 1: Top: At high temperature, ...

Scientists have used ultrashort x-ray pulses to directly observe the motion of electrons driving a chemical reaction. Figure 1: Gabalski and his colleagues fired x-ray pulses at ammonia molecules ...

New physics may explain discrepant values for the ionization energy of a metastable state of helium. Aaron Bondy is a theoretical physicist at Drake University in Iowa, where he works as a ...

A high-resolution imaging system captures distant objects by shining laser light on them and detecting the reflected light. Seeing the small picture. The remote-imaging system (left) shoots eight ...

Fusion reactor experiments in Switzerland have demonstrated a new way to remove unwanted heat from a magnetically confined plasma. Among the most enduring designs for a fusion reactor is the tokamak, ...

Top quarks and antiquarks have been detected in heavy-ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, showing that all six quark flavors were present in the Universe’s first moments. The ATLAS ...