Quantum mechanics has at last been formulated exclusively with real numbers, bringing a mathematical puzzle at the heart of ...

If standard quantum theory holds up, imaginary numbers are critical. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Imaginary numbers are ...

Imaginary numbers might seem like unicorns and goblins — interesting but irrelevant to reality. But for describing matter at its roots, imaginary numbers turn out to be essential. They seem to be ...

To a nonmathematician, having the letter "i" represent a number that does not quite exist and is "imaginary" can be hard to ...

The Curious Cases team get to grips with the very real uses of imaginary numbers. Show more There is a bizarre number in maths referred to simply as ‘i’. It appears to break the rules of arithmetic - ...

It should be impossible to measure an imaginary number in the lab, but a group of researchers have found a way to do so. They produced the equivalent of a magnetic field of imaginary strength, meaning ...

Imaginary numbers began as a desperate solution to equations that seemed unsolvable. In the 1500s, Italian mathematicians ...