Researchers have worked out how to make matter from pure light and are drawing up plans to demonstrate the feat within the next 12 months. The theory underpinning the idea was first described 80 years ago by two physicists who later worked on the first atomic bomb. At the time they considered the

Scientists have created a device that can release a single, precisely shaped photon of light, opening the way to a secure “quantum internet” that is incredibly powerful and impenetrable to hackers. The vision is of a future network of quantum computers that can work together to solve problems

The universe may be a lonelier place than previously thought. Of the estimated 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe, only one in 10 can support complex life like that on Earth, a pair of astrophysicists argues. Everywhere else, stellar explosions known as gamma ray bursts would regularly

It's food for thought—quite literally. A pair of scientists in the UK have turned a physics problem into an Italian-style dish. They invented anelloni, whose name is based on the Italian word for ring, as a way of studying ring-shaped polymers. Polymers, the site notes, are the "building blocks of

According to the laws of physics, the speed of light is a fundamental barrier that cannot be broken - nothing is supposed to be able to travel faster than it. So astronomers were left baffled when they spotted powerful flashes of energy bursting out from the heart of a supermassive black hole at