Despite its many successes, physicists are still struggling to nail down a coherent interpretation of quantum mechanics, as it best represents “reality”. Jim Baggott explores the arguments first put ...

Ideal system: A strontium ion trapped in an electric field. The measurement on the ion lasts only a millionth of a second. (Courtesy: F Pokorny et al., Stockholm University) Anyone familiar with ...

Uncertainty affects the accuracy with which measurements can be made in quantum physics. To reduce this uncertainty, physicists have learned to "squeeze" certain measurements. Researchers are now ...

When gathering a measurement using a spectroscopy instrument, the user wants to be confident in the result. Whether the technique is OES, XRF, or LIBS, or if thickness or composition are measured, the ...

Scientists are testing a novel way to measure cosmic expansion using time delays in gravitationally lensed quasars. Their ...

Measurements in physics are funny things. You’d hope that attempts to quantify some of the fundamental properties of the Universe would follow a simple pattern ...