Quantum

There’s no such thing as random in classical physics – for true randomization you need to turn to quantum physics. Now scientists have done just that, creating secure encryption keys based on the genuine randomness of quantum vibrations of diamond.

Researchers in China have demonstrated a quantum communication network where entangled photons are beamed between drones and ground stations, successfully maintaining their quantum link over a distance of 1 km.

Princeton physicists have accidentally discovered an unexpected quantum behavior in an insulator that was thought to be unique to metals. The find suggests a brand new type of quantum particle, which the team calls a neutral fermion.

A quantum internet would be much faster and more secure than the regular web – and now it may be one step closer to reality. Scientists have used quantum teleportation to send information over long distances, with a higher fidelity than ever before.

Atomic clocks are our most precise timekeepers, with the best ones keeping time to within one second in 15 billion years. But there’s always room for improvement, as researchers at MIT have now demonstrated with a new quantum-entangled atomic clock.

A Chinese quantum computer called Jiuzhang has apparently achieved "quantum supremacy" – conducting a calculation in 200 seconds that would take a regular supercomputer a staggering 2.5 billion years to complete.

Engineers at Brookhaven National Laboratory have designed a strange new X-ray microscope that takes advantage of the spooky world of quantum physics to “ghost image” biomolecules in high resolution but at a lower radiation dose.

Progress on quantum computers may soon stall. Cosmic rays streaming to Earth can interfere with the integrity of information in quantum computers, and now an MIT team has shown just how vulnerable they are and what it might take to protect them.

Which time travel movie got the rules right? According to experiments using a quantum time travel simulator, reality is “self-healing,” so changes made to the past won’t drastically alter the future you came from – at least, in the quantum realm.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has announced and detailed a blueprint for a national quantum internet that would be super-fast and nigh on unhackable. The document describes four priority research areas, and five major milestones on the path.

Using just a few hundred identical atoms, physicists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics have pieced together the world’s lightest mirror, which is invisible to the naked eye and has a surface measured in mere microns.

Classical physics describes how large objects and systems work on an everyday scale, while quantum physics describes the “spooky” subatomic world. Now scientists have observed a rare crossover where a quantum fluctuation affected a macroscale object.