Holding pattern Small clusters of caesium atoms (pink blobs) were held in a vertical optical lattice. A laser then splits each atom into a quantum state in which half of the atom was closer to a ...

Interferometers capture a basic mystery of quantum mechanics: a single particle can exhibit wave behaviour, yet that wave behaviour disappears when one tries to determine the particle’s path inside ...

Left, schematics of the apparatus (positron beam, collimators, SiN gratings and emulsion detector. A HpGe detector is used as beam monitor). Right, single-particle interference visibility as a ...

I always tell my students that LIGO (laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory) is one of humanity’s most stunning achievements. Basically, a group of people set out to measure the ...

Matter waves constitute a crucial feature of quantum mechanics, where particles have wave properties in addition to particle characteristics. This wave-particle duality was postulated already in 1924 ...

Assuming dark matter exists, its interactions with ordinary matter are so subtle that even the most sensitive instruments cannot detect them. In a new study, Northwestern University physicists now ...

Researchers from the Vienna University of Technology have performed the first separation of a particle from one of its properties. The study, carried out at the Institute Laue-Langevin (ILL) and ...

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign developed an instrument to measure the density of the dust that kicks up when spacecraft thrusters interact with planetary surfaces as it ...

What is dark matter? Scientists from Britain and Germany say an as-yet-undetected subatomic particle could help account for the 80 percent of the universe's mass that we can't see. This theoretical ...

Dark energy -- a mysterious force pushing the universe apart at an ever-increasing rate -- was discovered 26 years ago, and ever since, scientists have been searching for a new and exotic particle ...

One of the most important experiments of quantum physics gets a makeover: When neutrons are fired at a crystal, they can be made to travel along two paths at the same time. Until now, this was only ...