Marianne Freiberger

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The puzzle of time

Why does time only ever move in one direction? We talk to philosophers of physics Jeremy Butterfield and David Wallace, as well as the eminent Roger Penrose about the puzzle time poses to physicists and what it has to do with the Big Bang and the second law of thermodynamics.
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hourglass with clock behind

What is time?

Everyone knows what time is. We can practically feel it ticking away, marching on in the same direction with horrifying regularity. Time has enslaved the Western world and become our most precious commodity. Turn it over to the physicists however, and it begins to morph, twist and even crumble away. So what is time exactly?
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New phases of matter: Abstract nonsense comes good

Category theory, which has previously been described as "abstract nonsense" turns out to be just the language we need to describe materials that may help us build quantum computers. Find out more in this article.

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Donuts

The Quantum Hall Effect: Protected by topology

The quantum Hall effect is a curious phenomenon: not only does it make effects from quantum physics visible in the macroscopic world, it also links physics to the pure mathematical area of topology. Find out more in this article.

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Water, ice and broken symmetry

What does water feeding to ice have to do with symmetry? This article provides an answer and begins to tell the astonishing story of how theory once denounced as "abstract nonsense" may help us build quantum computers.

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Dark stars

Gravitational waves have provided a wealth of information about black holes. But could other objects be hiding in this data too? Researchers are exploring this idea, which may also help resolve the mystery of dark matter.

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Helping maths to help us

The mathematics of the future needs more specialist maths teachers, stronger university provision, and sustained research funding.

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Phone screen showing AI apps

Talking about truth with ChatGPT

How confident is the Large Language Model chatbot that its answers are correct? And how confident can we be about this confidence? This article investigates.