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Charlie Wood

Staff Writer

Latest Articles

If the Universe Is a Hologram, This Long-Forgotten Math Could Decode It

September 25, 2024

A 1930s-era breakthrough is helping physicists understand how quantum threads could weave together into a holographic space-time fabric.

The Two Faces of Space-Time

September 25, 2024

A mysterious phenomenon known as duality often leads to new discoveries in physics. This time, space-time itself can sometimes be two things at once.

The Thought Experiments That Fray the Fabric of Space-Time

September 25, 2024

These three imagined scenarios lead many physicists to doubt that space-time is fundamental.

The Unraveling of Space-Time

This special issue of Quanta Magazine explores the ultimate scientific quest: the search for the fundamental nature of reality.

He Seeks Mystery Magnetic Fields With His Quantum Compass

May 17, 2024

Alex Sushkov is updating an old technology with new quantum tricks in hopes of sensing the magnetic influence of dark matter.

AI Starts to Sift Through String Theory’s Near-Endless Possibilities

April 23, 2024

Using machine learning, string theorists are finally showing how microscopic configurations of extra dimensions translate into sets of elementary particles — though not yet those of our universe.

Dark Energy May Be Weakening, Major Astrophysics Study Finds

April 4, 2024

A generation of physicists has referred to the dark energy that permeates the universe as “the cosmological constant.” Now the largest map of the cosmos to date hints that this mysterious energy has been changing over billions of years.

Swirling Forces, Crushing Pressures Measured in the Proton

March 14, 2024

Long-anticipated experiments that use light to mimic gravity are revealing the distribution of energies, forces and pressures inside a subatomic particle for the first time.

A Quantum Trick Implied Eternal Stability. Now the Idea May Be Falling Apart.

February 26, 2024

A series of advances seemed to promise the impossible: the existence of quantum states that would never, ever fall into disarray. But physicists are now discovering that the pull of disorder may not be so easily overcome.

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