Electrons in van der Waals materials use shortcuts to travel fast People just love protons. On the other hand side: If they talk about electrons, they always tend to emphasize the negative aspects. Though there are some advantages being an electron, too. As scientists at the KU’s Ultrafast Laser Lab […]
Do you remember „Anyone Can Quantum“? The epic quantum chess game between Paul Rudd and Stephen Hawking? We blogged about it here. Well, the team at Caltech’s Institute of Quantum Information and Matter and at Trouper Productions just made their second viral movie. It’s quite entertaining and maybe a little […]
How did James Bond win at Casino Royale? Why do I always lose at Monopoly? Is it any use to join the imperial army in Skyrim? These are the topics of game theory. Or so you might think, because that’s just plainly wrong. „Game theory“ is a rather young and […]
Maybe we are a little step further to explain why there is „something“ rather than „nothing“. Because the Standard model of physics – which worked quite well to describe the universe so far – tells us that there should be: (dramatic pause) Nothing at all. First there was just plain […]
If hydrogen could be made into a metal, wonderful things could happen! Unicorns would dance in our streets, we could settle on Alpha Centauri, lions would turn to vegetarians and John Lennon would be president. But let’s not get over excited and better start at the fundamentals. Our periodic table […]
It’s exactly as some strange esoteric websites have told you for decades: Quantum physicists manipulate nothing. This is the case NOT because there are no quantum objects, but because there is no nothing. Literally. We cannot produce a perfect vacuum. And that’s not because our pumps or our containers aren’t strong […]
Quantum physics tends to look like “magic”. This is one reason why it’s so quool. Cool, actually. Very cool. Very, very cool. “As-cool-as-it-can-get”-cool. Like in “absolute zero”. Which is really cool, because enthalpy and entropy reaches zero. No temperature at all, meaning no energy, no movement. We know about this […]
Are we a little late to the party? Sorry, must have been the Romulan Ale we had at the 8th of September, when „Star Trek“ turned 50. Half a century ago James Tiberius Kirk sat down on his command chair for the first time on television. Nowadays „Star Trek“ is […]
This little video was made by Hannes Bernien from the Delft University of Technology. If you were curious what the workplace of a quantum physicist looks like: Here you can have a glimpse. So much up front: It’s underground, it’s dark and it makes no sense to normal human beings. […]
An nerd fight rages over at YouTube. The clever explain-it-alls at C.P. Grey started it. In a charming video they explain, why teleportation as seen on television – in all Star Trek franchises, to be exact – can not work as advertised. Discussed not only on a scientific base, […]