Rachel Thomas

Leslie Lamport explains how he used logical clocks to set history straight in distributed systems.

Leslie Lamport explains how an understanding of special relativity helped him realise how to order events in computer science, and enabled the development of distributed computing.

My view of the events taking place on my computer is very different to how a computer scientist, a engineer or a physicist would view what is happening inside the box. Leslie Lamport explains how the definition of an event distinguishes between these areas of research.

Our digital lives rely on distributed computer systems, such as the network of banks that allow us to deposit cash in one place and withdraw it in another. But understanding the order of events in such systems is not always straightforward.

The Institute is celebrating 25 years of bringing researchers together!

The Kochen-Specker theorem shows that quantum mechanics is always going to be strange. Its proof is surprisingly simple!

This year's Nobel Prize for Physics brings together the physics of materials with one of our favourite areas of maths – topology.

Has the future already already been written? Is time just an illusion? Take a step outside of spacetime with cosmologist Marina Cortês to discover the block universe.

Fundamental physics says time is symmetric - so why does time move forwards for us in a block universe?

Is time real? Are we just puppets living out a future already written? Marina Cortês explains why she thinks time is fundamental and that we don't live in a block universe.

Marina Cortês is one of a growing number of physicists who believe time is fundamental. We ask her about the alternatives theories to the block universe, where time comes first.