For decades, physicists have talked about quantum distance, a way of measuring how similar or different two quantum states are. In this strange scale, a distance of one means two quantum states are ...

Jim Baggott is a science writer based in Cape Town, South Africa. He is co-author with John Heilbron of Quantum Drama. Quantum mechanics is an extraordinarily successful scientific theory, on which ...

Virtual particles may not be real, but they help physicists track how forces move, and allow for incredibly precise ...

Gravity can turn itself into light, but only if space-time behaves in just the right way, a research team has found. Under normal circumstances, you cannot get something from nothing. Specifically, ...

Scientists using a global array of radio telescopes have detected the universe’s lowest-mass dark object by observing how it warped light through gravitational lensing. The invisible mass, about a ...

A clever mathematical tool known as virtual particles unlocks the strange and mysterious inner workings of subatomic particles. What happens to these ...