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Will Better Superconductors Transform the World?
...would win Kamerlingh Onnes the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physics. [Theme ends] But more importantly, it marked the start of an unresolved quest for material that maintains perfect conductivity at...
![Colorful illustration in which a sphere divided into four quadrants is surrounded by spheres divided into halves and thirds.]](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/TETRAQUARK_520x292.jpg)
‘Impossible’ Particle Discovery Adds Key Piece to the Strong Force Puzzle
...meeting of Syracuse University’s quark physics group, Ivan Polyakov announced that he had uncovered the fingerprints of a semi-mythical particle. “We said, ‘This is impossible. What mistake are you making?’”...
Did the Chicken Come First or Is It Turtles All the Way Down?
The apparent paradox of the chicken and the egg smells like “turtles all the way down.” This puzzle shows how biology and physics can overcome infinite regress. When you consider...
A New Map of All the Particles and Forces
...interactions. Together, the equations formed a succinct theory now known as the Standard Model of particle physics. The Standard Model is missing a few puzzle pieces (conspicuously absent are the...
Scant Evidence of Power Laws Found in Real-World Networks
...that earned Kenneth Wilson the 1982 Nobel Prize in physics. Soon after, power laws formed the core of two other paradigms that swept across the statistical physics world: fractals, and...
For His Sporting Approach to Math, a Fields Medal
...had a hard time finding that with physics.” He ended up focusing on an area of math that hewed very close to physics and was motivated almost entirely by physical...
New ‘Superdiffusion’ Proof Probes the Mysterious Math of Turbulence
...around Normandy and across the English Channel into England. The aeronauts were unwittingly participating in an experiment that would alter the course of mathematical physics. Nearly two decades later, a...
The ‘Weirdest’ Matter, Made of Partial Particles, Defies Description
...some of the grittiest problems in fundamental physics. Fractons are quasiparticles — particle-like entities that emerge out of complicated interactions between many elementary particles inside a material. But fractons are...
The Near-Magical Mystery of Quasiparticles
...Das Sarma is undeterred. “I guarantee you the Majorana will be seen, because its theory is pristine. This is an engineering problem; this is not a physics problem,” he said....