For more than a century, schoolbook physics has divided matter into neat categories like solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. A ...

In 2004 researchers reported the first clear evidence for superfluidity in solid helium-4. However, Matthew Chalmers describes recent experimental and theoretical work that has brought the very ...

Physicists are now watching matter behave in a way that defies everyday intuition, with atoms and even light itself arranging ...

Note: Articles may be assigned to more than one subject area, as a result the sum of the subject research outputs may not equal the overall research outputs. Identify research insights to guide ...

Science and technology could be revolutionized by quantum computers, but building them from solid-state devices will not be easy. Robert W Keyes of IBM's research division outlines the challenges in ...

This article was produced in partnership with the author by Scientific American Custom Media, a commercial division separate from the magazine’s board of editors. The temperature dependence of the ...

Thought experiments can be extremely powerful; after all, pretty much everything that [Einstein] came up with was based on thought experiments. But when a thought experiment turns into a real ...