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Quantum mechanicsResearch updateWave–particle duality quantified for the first time 01 Sep 2021 Complementarity A new twist on the double-slit experiment. (Courtesy: Shutterstock/Andrey VP) One of the most counterintuitive concepts in physics – the idea that quantum objects are complementary, behaving like waves in some situations and like particles in others – just got a new and more quantitative foundation. In a twist on the classic double-slit experiment, scientists at Korea’s Institute for Basic Sciences (IBS) used precisely controlled photon sources to measure a photon’s degree of wave-ness and particle-ness. Their results, published in Science Advances, show that the properties of...

NEW YORK (AP) — Singer Dua Lipa is blasting an organization that paid for a full-page ad in The New York Times that called her antisemitic for her support of Palestinians, saying it used her name “shamelessly” to “advance their ugly campaign with falsehoods and blatant misrepresentations.” I n the ad which appeared in Saturday’s newspaper in the main section, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the head of the World Values Network, named Lipa, and the models Bella and Gigi Hadid as three “mega-influencers” who have “accused Israel of ethnic cleansing” and “vilified the Jewish State.”

'Delayed-choice' test, a first with spacefaring photons, affirms light can behave like a wave or a particle. Light is two-faced: Sometimes it behaves like a wave, sometimes like a particle. Now, scientists have shown that light’s shifty disposition persists even after trekking thousands of kilometers into space and back again, researchers report October 25 in Science Advances.Depending on how light is measured, it can either be particle-like, lighting up a camera pixel, for example, or wavelike, interfering with other waves like ripples on the surface of water. It’s one of the many oddities of quantum mechanics. Before light is measured,...

The bizarre nature of reality as laid out by quantum theory has survived another test, with scientists performing a famous experiment and proving that reality does not exist until it is measured. Physicists at The Australian National University (ANU) have conducted John Wheeler's delayed-choice thought experiment, which involves a moving object that is given the choice to act like a particle or a wave. Wheeler's experiment then asks - at which point does the object decide? Common sense says the object is either wave-like or particle-like, independent of how we measure it. But quantum physics predicts that whether you observe...

Here's a nice surprise: quantum physics is less complicated than we thought. An international team of researchers has proved that two peculiar features of the quantum world previously considered distinct are different manifestations of the same thing. The result is published 19 December in Nature Communications. Patrick Coles, Jedrzej Kaniewski, and Stephanie Wehner made the breakthrough while at the Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore. They found that 'wave-particle duality' is simply the quantum 'uncertainty principle' in disguise, reducing two mysteries to one."The connection between uncertainty and wave-particle duality comes out very naturally when you...

Hamas and the Palestinian Authority were in talks to form a national unity government in preparation for the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections, the Bethlehem-based Ma'an News Agency reported Tuesday. Abbas received phone calls from Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh confirming their decision to join Hamas with Fatah, according to Ma'an sources. This was not the first time that the two parties had announced an agreement to end their differences. Over the past few years, Fatah and Hamas have reached a number of such agreements that were never implemented. .....

Work completed by physics professors at Rowan University shows that light is made of particles and waves, a finding that refutes a common belief held for about 80 years. Shahriar S. Afshar, the visiting professor who is currently at Boston's Institute for Radiation-Induced Mass Studies (IRIMS), led a team, including Rowan physics professors Drs. Eduardo Flores and Ernst Knoesel and student Keith McDonald, that proved Afshar’s original claims, which were based on a series of experiments he had conducted several years ago. An article on the work titled "Paradox in Wave-Particle Duality" recently published in Foundations of Physics, a prestigious,...