Some of today’s quantum physicists are tinkering with an esoteric phase of matter that seems to disobey some of our laws of physics. What exactly is a time crystal?

A team of physicists has entangled three photons over a considerable distance, which could lead to more powerful quantum cryptography.

A hitherto undiscovered black hole announced its presence to astronomers when it ripped apart and devoured a star that wandered too close to it. The intermediate-mass black hole located in a dwarf galaxy a million light-years from Earth shredded the star in an occurrence that astronomers call a Tidal Disruption Event (TDE). The TDE made itself visible when it blasted out a flare of radiation so powerful that it briefly outshone every star in its dwarf galaxy home combined.

Quantum mechanics, the theory which rules the microworld of atoms and particles, certainly has the X factor.

A first-time observed collision between a pair of black holes, which was 10 billion times faster than previous observations, has proven Albert Einstein’s theory as correct. The pair of black holes orbit each other, getting rid of the gravitational waves as they rotate closer to one another. However, as in the case of the precession, Einstein’s theory of general relativity indicates the way black holes can affect the precession or movement. Einstein also predicted gravitational waves in 1916 in his theory.

A new assessment of the electron is the most precise measurement of a particle ever taken, at a precision of 1.3 parts in 10 trillion, and could tell us about new physics happening at the smallest scales. The electron’s magnetic moment is a quantum property related to magnetism and is predicted by the standard model, our current understanding of how the basic building blocks of the universe interact. But the standard model is unable to explain certain real-world observations...

A wormhole is like a tunnel between two distant points in our universe that cuts the travel time from one point to the other. Imagine two towns on two opposite sides of a mountain. People from these towns would probably have to travel all the way around the mountain to visit one another. But, if they wanted to get there faster, they could dig a tunnel straight through the mountain to create a shortcut. That's the idea behind a wormhole.

For decades, a family of crystals has stumped physicists with its baffling ability to superconduct — that is, carry an electric current without any resistance — at far warmer temperatures than other materials. Now, an experiment years in the making has directly visualized superconductivity on the atomic scale in one of these crystals, finally revealing the cause of the phenomenon to nearly everyone’s satisfaction. Electrons appear to nudge each other into a frictionless flow in a manner first suggested by a venerable theory nearly as old as the mystery itself.

Quantum entanglement allows particles to affect one another faster than the speed of light. So does this mean we could one day build a device to exploit this and enable superluminal communication? A popular trope in sci-fi for sure, but today let's look at the science.

Few things in the Universe keep the beat as reliably as an atom's pulse.

In 1963, the mathematician Roy Kerr found a solution to Einstein’s equations that precisely described the space-time outside what we now call a rotating black hole. (The term wouldn’t be coined for a few more years.) In the nearly six decades since his achievement, researchers have tried to show that these so-called Kerr black holes are stable.

We still don't know exactly what happens when black holes die. Ever since Stephen Hawking discovered that black holes evaporate, we've known that they can potentially disappear from our universe. But our understanding of gravity and quantum mechanics isn't powerful enough to describe the last moments of a black hole's life.

Scientists have created a new phase of matter, in which time has two dimensions. The creation of an “extra” dimension in time could change the way we think about matter as well as helping build quantum computers that could themselves change the world, according to the researchers who found it.

Two players leverage quantum rules to achieve a seemingly telepathic connection

We can model the motions of planets in the Solar System quite accurately using Newton’s laws of physics. But in the early 1970s, scientists noticed that this didn’t work for disc galaxies – stars at their outer edges, far from the gravitational force of all the matter at their centre – were moving much faster than Newton’s theory predicted.

The "most comprehensive studies" of the Higgs boson conducted to date reveal that the particle behaves just as expected and could help unlock some of the greatest mysteries of physics, including the nature of dark matter, scientists say.

Researchers have discovered a new particle that is a magnetic relative of the Higgs boson. Whereas the discovery of the Higgs boson required the tremendous particle-accelerating power of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), this never-before-seen particle  —  dubbed the axial Higgs boson — was found using an experiment that would fit on a small kitchen countertop.

Even if you keep your distance, a black cat in your path is bad luck if you're superstitious. Similarly, in quantum physics, particles can sense the influence of magnetic fields with which they have no direct contact. Scientists have now demonstrated that this strange quantum effect applies not only to magnetic fields but also to gravity — and it's not a myth.

Investigating cosmic mysteries by smashing protons together.

The physics of the microrealm involves two famous and bizarre concepts: superposition and entanglement. Both are described mathematically by quantum theory, but many physicists believe that one day quantum theory will need to be replaced by an ultimate theory of reality that lies beyond quantum theory. Now, a team of physicists and mathematicians has discovered a new connection between these two weird properties that does not assume that quantum theory is correct. Their work, partially funded by the Foundational Questions Institute, FQXi, confirms that current quantum cryptographic protocols, which promise ultra-secure un-hackable...