Higgs boson observed decaying to b quarks

The Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism solves the apparent theoretical impossibility of weak vector bosons (W and Z) to have mass. The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 was a triumph of the Standard Model. The Higgs field can also be used in an elegant way to provide mass to charged fermions (quarks and leptons) through interactions […]

A step closer to single-atom data storage

Despite the rise of solid-state drives, magnetic storage devices such as conventional hard drives and magnetic tapes are still very common. But as our data-storage needs are increasing at a rate of almost 15 million gigabytes per day, scientists are turning to alternative storage devices. One of these are single-atom magnets: storage devices consisting of […]

India’s Closer To Putting A Person In Space

This past Thursday, the Indian Space Research Organization performed a crucial pad-abort test on their crew capsule spacecraft, a successful crewed launch of which would make India only the fourth country ever to independently launch a human into space, after the (late) Soviet Union, United States, and China. The test was designed to simulate an […]

18-qubit entanglement sets new record

Physicists have experimentally demonstrated 18-qubit entanglement, which is the largest entangled state achieved so far with individual control of each qubit. As each qubit has two possible values, the 18 qubits can generate a total of 218 (or 262,144) combinations of output states. Since quantum information can be encoded in these states, the results have […]