This is all covered by Isaac Newton’s third law of motion, which is one of physics’ most familiar rules: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. But physicists in China have now ...

Physics is supposed to be predictable. Drop a ball, and gravity pulls it down. Heat water, and it boils. Light travels in straight lines. Yet throughout history, scientists have encountered ...

Quantum physics is the realm of the strange. And one of the strangest discoveries in the field is also one of the most fundamental: Particles fired at barriers with two slits in them can act like ...

Imperial physicists have recreated the famous double-slit experiment, which showed light behaving as particles and a wave, in time rather than space. The experiment relies on materials that can change ...

In day-to-day life, light seems intangible. We walk through it and create and extinguish it with the flip of a switch. But, like matter, light actually carries a little punch—it has momentum. Light ...

Ultrashort laser pulses can be used to generate X-rays. Normally, however, only certain specific frequencies are produced. A team from TU Wien and the University of California San Diego has developed ...

Physics experiments have changed the world irrevocably, altering our reality and enabling us to take gigantic leaps in technology. From ancient times to now, here's a look at some of the greatest ...

I had a conversation like this with a colleague. "They say that if you fly at a speed close to the speed of light, the flow ...

Scientists have discovered “unexpected physics” by opening up “slits” in time, a new study reports, achieving a longstanding dream that can help to probe the behavior of light and pioneer advanced ...

A device that can detect particles arriving from space does not necessarily require a multimillion-dollar laboratory. A ...

The most beautiful experiment in physics, according to a poll of Physics World readers, is the interference of single electrons in a Young’s double slit. Robert P Crease reports Simply beautiful – the ...