BIZARRE: 13 - What They Never Told You

Physicists are rethinking how we measure time

A University of Colorado team tested aluminum-ion, ytterbium, and strontium atomic clocks to help find ways to improve the accuracy of timekeeping.

Inverse · Dec 28, 2021

2021: a year physicists asked, 'What lies beyond the Standard Model?'

If you ask a physicist like me to explain how the world works, my lazy answer might be: “It follows the Standard Model.”

The Conversation · Dec 22, 2021

COP26: a letter to school strikers from 'the physicist behind net zero'

Dear school striker,

The Conversation · Nov 4, 2021

Approaching zero: super-chilled mirrors edge towards the borders of gravity and quantum physics

The LIGO gravitational wave observatory in the United States is so sensitive to vibrations it can detect the tiny ripples in space-time called gravitational waves. These waves are caused by colliding black holes and other stellar cataclysms in distant galaxies, and they cause movements in the observatory much smaller than…

The Conversation · Jun 17, 2021

Bizarre particle discovered morphing between matter and antimatter raises mystery about the Big Bang

The charm meson has a light and heavy version that helps distinguish between its matter and antimatter states

The Independent UK · Jun 14, 2021

Antimatter: scientists find way to trap elusive material by blasting it with lasers

Antimatter is believed to play a huge part in the story of our universe. It’s the counterpart to matter: identical in every way – with protons, neutrons and electrons – but with an opposite electric charge. According to our best understanding of the laws of physics, the universe of today…

The Conversation · Apr 22, 2021

Physicists use a weird quirk of quantum physics to hunt dark matter

Nearly a century after dark matter was first proposed to explain the motion of galaxy clusters, physicists still have no idea what it’s made of.

Inverse · Mar 13, 2021

Quantum philosophy: 4 ways physics will challenge your reality

Imagine opening the weekend paper and looking through the puzzle pages for the Sudoku. You spend your morning working through this logic puzzle, only to realise by the last few squares there’s no consistent way to finish it.

The Conversation · Dec 24, 2020

This nuclear fusion reactor could be producing clean energy as soon as 2030

As countries around the world race to rid themselves of fossil fuels, nuclear fusion presents the ultimate opportunity in its promise of an effectively limitless supply of clean energy. While it's largely been theoretical up to this point, new…

Mic · Oct 1, 2020

Major quantum computational breakthrough is shaking up physics and maths

MIP* = RE is not a typo. It is a groundbreaking discovery and the catchy title of a recent paper in the field of quantum complexity theory. Complexity theory is a zoo of “complexity classes” – collections of computational problems – of which MIP* and RE are but two.

The Conversation · Aug 14, 2020