What We're Reading

From underground exploration to brain science and air-traffic control, the sensing potential of quantum devices is enormous. But they must first get out of the laboratory.

Betelgeuse, the red star at the shoulder of the constellation Orion, has been acting strange, says Flatiron Institute astrophysicist Jared Goldberg, raising hopes for the spectacle of a lifetime.

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope could help resolve some cosmic discrepancies: How fast the universe is expanding and how evenly matter is distributed.

Any quantum experiment done near a black hole could set up a paradox in which the black hole reveals information about its interior — something physics says is forbidden. The way around the paradox, according to new research, s if the black hole simply destroys any quantum states that come close.

A new physics result two decades in the making has found a surprisingly complex path for the production of strange matter within atoms.

Physicists have put an object in two simultaneous vibrating states, emulating the cat that is both dead and alive in Erwin Schrödinger’s celebrated thought experiment.

In the last half-century, astronomers from around the world have flocked to Chile and its silky skies, and now many of the largest telescopes on Earth have taken root along a sort of observatory alley that runs north-south for some 800 miles along the edge of the Atacama Desert.

A mutation that prevents certain amino acids from entering neurons leads to the cells’ death early in brain development, according to a new study in mice. The findings provide clues to what happens in the brains of people with the mutation, which is linked to autism.

In the next decade, quantum information science and quantum technologies are expected to have a significant impact on the economy. To fulfill that promise, the U.S. will need a “quantum-capable” workforce that is conversant with the core aspects of quantum technologies and is large enough to meet the expected demand.

Researchers with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, including Simons Foundation and Flatiron Institute scientists, have traced the distribution of dark matter on a quarter of the sky and across almost 14 billion years of time.