Bookmarks (11)

Astronomers are ready to search for the fingerprints of life in faraway planetary atmospheres. But first, they need to know where to look — and that means figuring out which planets are likely to have atmospheres in the first place. The post The Road Map to Alien Life Passes Through the ‘Cosmic Shoreline’ first appeared on Quanta Magazine

In math and computer science, researchers have long understood that some questions are fundamentally unanswerable. Now physicists are exploring how even ordinary physical systems put hard limits on what we can predict, even in principle. The post ‘Next-Level’ Chaos Traces the True Limit of Predictability first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Quantum calculations amount to sophisticated estimates. But in 1931, Hans Bethe intuited precisely how a chain of particles would behave — an insight that had far-reaching consequences. The post How Hans Bethe Stumbled Upon Perfect Quantum Theories first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Emmy Noether showed that fundamental physical laws are just a consequence of simple symmetries. A century later, her insights continue to shape physics. The post How Noether’s Theorem Revolutionized Physics first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Is the universe flat and infinite, or something more complex? We can’t say for sure, but a new search strategy is mapping out the subtle signals that could reveal if the universe had a shape. The post Cosmologists Try a New Way to Measure the Shape of the Universe first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Heat is supposed to ruin anything it touches. But physicists have shown that an idealized form of magnetism is heatproof. The post Heat Destroys All Order. Except for in This One Special Case. first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Inside the proton, quarks and gluons shift and morph their properties in ways that physicists are still struggling to understand. Rithya Kunnawalkam Elayavalli brings to the problem a perspective unlike many of their peers. The post The Physicist Decoding the Nonbinary Nature of the Subatomic World first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The first planet beyond our solar system was identified just 30 years ago. Since then, thousands have been found and characterized. As we look for more, exoplanet experts are also probing for signs of alien biospheres hundreds of light-years away. In this episode, co-host Janna Levin speaks with astrophysicist and astrobiologist Lisa Kaltenegger about how we’ll know we’re not alone in the cosmos. The...

Physicists discovered strange supersolids, constructed new kinds of superconductors, and continued to make the case that the cosmos is far weirder than anyone suspected. The post The Year in Physics first appeared on Quanta Magazine

In a first, researchers have shown that adding more “qubits” to a quantum computer can make it more resilient. It’s an essential step on the long road to practical applications. The post Quantum Computers Cross Critical Error Threshold first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Three new species of superconductivity were spotted this year, illustrating the myriad ways electrons can join together to form a frictionless quantum soup. The post Exotic New Superconductors Delight and Confound first appeared on Quanta Magazine