Two mathematicians have proved that a straightforward question—how hard is it to untie a knot?—has a complicated answer.

The aurora borealis and aurora australis have dazzled us in the night sky for centuries. Here’s what causes them—and where ...

As far as particles of light are concerned, the collective is more important than the individual. When they get to decide between two states, they will favor the one that many of their fellow ...

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

Try to find the darkest, most open area possible, though elements in the foreground — buildings, trees, bridges — help anchor ...

How do we know the speed of light – and why does it have a speed limit at all? Leah Crane explores the history of one of the ...

Researchers in Austria have entangled matter-based qubits with photonic qubits in a ten-ion system. The technique is scalable to larger ion-qubit registers, paving the way for the creation of larger ...

Ars Technica: The Voyager Golden Record is perhaps the best known example of humans attempting to communicate with an alien species, spearheaded by the late Carl Sagan, among others. But what are the ...

The algorithms could also benefit AI by generating large, diverse datasets to train models or by enabling quantum-enhanced ...