Nathalie P. de Leon

An ordinary kitchen thermometer shows the temperature at which mercury stops resisting electricity. For superconductors used in quantum computers, the critical temperature is like a quality passport: the higher, the better.

A tiny defect in a diamond crystal is like a sensitive microphone picking up the faintest magnetic fields. That's how sensors based on nitrogen-vacancy centers work (where a nitrogen atom and a neighboring vacancy form a quantum system). To hear the whispers of individual molecules, the sensor is placed right at the surface.

Surf doesn't roll onto the shore as an even front. It comes in tongues of foam that merge and split apart. Magnetic fields inside materials behave much the same way: they breathe in waves, and until now nobody had seen them whole.