Forgetting feels like a failure of attention, but physics treats it as a fundamental process with a measurable price. At the smallest scales, erasing information is not free, it consumes energy and ...

One of the pieces of equipment for the quantum random number generator in the NIST Boulder laboratories. Very little in this life is truly random. A coin flip is influenced by the flipper’s force, its ...

A century ago, the strange behavior of atoms and elementary particles led physicists to formulate a new theory of nature. That theory, quantum mechanics, found immediate success, proving its worth ...

We’re celebrating 180 years of Scientific American. Explore our legacy of discovery and look ahead to the future. This year is the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, according to ...

Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...

Randomness is incredibly useful. People often draw straws, throw dice or flip coins to make fair choices. Random numbers can enable auditors to make completely unbiased selections. Randomness is also ...

Light is usually described using quantum mechanics when phenomena like entanglement enter the picture. But a new paper shows ...

In the 1960s, a group of physicists and historians began a massive project meant to catalogue and record the history of quantum physics. It was called Sources for History of Quantum Physics (SHQP). As ...