Physicists in France are the first to create a random laser in a cloud of cold atoms under laboratory conditions. The effect was first seen decades ago in stellar clouds and the team believes that its ...

If it hadn’t been for a shortfall in the supply of random numbers, one of history’s most infamous spy rings might never have been exposed. The shortage occurred in late 1941, two years after the start ...

Random numbers are crucial for computing, but our current algorithms aren’t truly random. Researchers at Brown University have now found a way to tap into the fluctuations of skyrmions to generate ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about physics, science, academia, and pop culture. As someone whose primary claim to fame is writing physics books ...

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics was handed out to people for pulling off what Marvel writers only pretend to understand: showing that quantum weirdness isn’t confined to subatomic particles. They ...

In September 2013, whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that American and British intelligence agencies had successfully cracked much of the online encryption internet users used to keep their ...

For centuries, the West has sought to decode the universe with the rigour of Euclid and the certainty of Christ. But every so often, reality throws up a figure so fundamentally resistant to analysis, ...