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At the heart of particle physics lies the Standard Model, a theory that has stood for nearly half a century as the best description of the subatomic realm. It tells us what particles exist, how they interact, and why the universe is stable at the smallest scales. The Standard Model
Culture
And to Paul Feyerabend
Analysis
In science, paradoxes often appear when familiar rules are pushed into unfamiliar territory. One of them is Parrondo’s paradox, a curious mathematical result showing that when two losing strategies are combined, they can produce a winning outcome. This might sound like trickery but the paradox has deep connections to
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A gentle reminder before we begin: you're allowed to be interested in particle physics. 😉 Neutrinos are among the most mysterious particles in physics. They are extremely light, electrically neutral, and interact so weakly with matter that trillions of them pass through your body each second without leaving a
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The United Nations has designated 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. Many physics magazines and journals have taken the opportunity to publish more articles on quantum physics than they usually do, and that has meant quantum physics research has often been on my mind. Nirmalya Kajuri, an
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Quantum technologies and the prospect of advanced, next-generation electronic devices have been maturing at an increasingly rapid pace. Both research groups and governments around the world are investing more attention in this domain. India for example mooted its National Quantum Mission in 2023 with a decade-long outlay of Rs 6,
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When reading around for my piece yesterday on the wavefunctions of quantum mechanics, I stumbled across an old and fascinating debate about Saturn’s moon Hyperion. The question of how the smooth, classical world around us emerges from the rules of quantum mechanics has haunted physicists for a century. Most
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If you drop a pebble into a pond, ripples spread outward in gentle circles. We all know this sight, and it feels natural to call them waves. Now imagine being told that everything — from an electron to an atom to a speck of dust — can also behave like a wave,
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In conventional ‘macroscopic’ engines like the ones that guzzle fossil fuels to power cars and motorcycles, the fuels are set ablaze to release heat, which is converted to mechanical energy and transferred to the vehicle’s moving parts. In order to perform these functions over and over in a continuous
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AI-generated definition based on 'Quantitative and analytical tools to analyze the spatiotemporal population dynamics of microbial consortia’, Current Opinion in Biotechnology, August 2022: The Red Queen hypothesis refers to the idea that a constant rate of extinction persists in a community, independent of the duration of a species'
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The virtue of ‘show, don't tell’ in writing, including in journalism, lies in its power to create a more vivid, immersive, and emotionally engaging reading experience. Instead of simply providing information or summarising events, the technique encourages writers to use evocative imagery, action, dialogue, and sensory details to
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A superconducting transition-edge sensor (TES) is a device well-known for its extreme sensitivity to photons, the particles of light — so much so that they can count photons one by one. They also have very little noise, which makes their readings quite reliable. TESs are often used in single-photon detectors in