False vacuum in a ring of atoms
Emptiness isn't always empty: it can hide energy, like supercooled water hides ice. Physicists call this false vacuum — a state that only needs a nudge to cascade into the true one.
Growing a Precision Catalyst
Quantum computers make mistakes. Each step of a computation introduces a tiny inaccuracy, and if left uncorrected, the result degenerates into noise. One of the main challenges is rotating a phase by an arbitrary angle. The standard approach is to assemble the desired rotation from a set of simple operations, like a mosaic.
The Cosmic Resonator: How Expansion Amplifies Gravitational Waves
In the first moments after the Big Bang, the Universe was not a silent void but a seething cauldron of plasma, threaded with sound waves. As the temperature dropped, the cosmos underwent phase transitions — spontaneous reorganizations that gave birth to bubbles of a new phase.
How a Tomograph Gathers Shadows to See the Invisible
Tomographs don't produce ready-made pictures. They collect numerous 'shadows' — projections of innards from different angles or using various signals — and mathematically reconstruct a 3D picture from them.
AI Learns to Create Viruses
By 2025, large language models like GPT are no longer just chatting: they're helping scientists run experiments. But the same tool could fall into the wrong hands. A team of researchers built a digital proving ground to find out.