Quantum Information: a Scientific and Technological Revolution for the 21st Century
Two of the great scientific and technical revolutions of the 20th century were the discovery of the quantum nature of the submicroscopic world, and the advent of information science and engineering. Both of these have had a profound effect not only o....
More details | Watch nowBiomimetic adhesive microstructures
Stanislav Gorb is Professor of Zoology at the University of Kiel, Germany, with an interest in functional morphology and biomechanics. Here he discusses clustering as a form of self-assembly, and applications in adhesion.
More details | Watch nowThe Fundamental Aspect of Chemistry in 1 Minute, the Periodic Table, and Angular Momentum in Quantum Mechanics
A brief explanation of quantum mechanics, and how it is related to the periodic table and all of life
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It was in 1882 that Walther Flemming published drawings of chromosomes lining up in mitosis and parting equally to the daughters of cell division, and 20 years later that Theodor Boveri explained the significance of the chromosome dance in terms of t....
More details | Watch nowFour Horsemen of the 21st Century Apocalypse
The ‘Common Sense’ that is needed to survive does not necessarily provide correct answers to the way the Universe works. Science is actually not that old, it really only started in about the 16th Century and was a byproduct of ‘The Enlightenm....
More details | Watch nowSuperposition, Entanglement, and Raising Schrödinger’s Cat
In 1935, Erwin Schrödinger, one of the inventors of quantum mechanics, illustrated his discomfort with the theory by pointing out that its extension to the macroscopic world could lead to bizarre situations such as a cat being simultaneously alive a....
More details | Watch nowThe Quantum Mechanics of Light: Interference, Entanglement – and Ghosts
The early days of the quantum theory presented many dilemmas connected with interference phenomena and what we have come to call the entanglement of states. We are much better able to deal with these problems now, both in theory and experiment, but t....
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In October 2011 we celebrated the centenary of the Solvay conferences that played a unique and important role in the development of twentieth century physics, most notably in the quantum revolution whose birth overlapped the initiation of these meeti....
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How can one advance a working hypothesis that will not be wrong tomorrow and ridiculous the day after? Beyond the Standard Model we find uncertainty and confusion, with both unclarity as to which might be the correct theory, as well as little in the ....
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A few (surprising?) thoughts on how the wheels on a longboard or skateboard actually move.
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Jonathan describes his adventures with a longboard and some different methods of making a speedometer for it.
More details | Watch nowPaul Dirac and the religion of mathematical beauty
For the great theoretical physicist Paul Dirac FRS, the importance of mathematical beauty was 'like a religion'. Although his first papers on quantum mechanics showed an acute aesthetic awareness, he first set out his principle of mathematical beauty....
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