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Alice on Earth and Bob on the Moon illustrating independent quantum operations

Alice on Earth, Bob on the Moon: operations performed on their respective particles cannot affect one another, expressed mathematically as A · B = B · A

Science Where’s the Catch?

Pedro Barrios Hita on what really happens when you try to write quantum mechanics with real numbers

Anyone familiar with complex numbers knows they can be described using two real numbers. The extra ingredient is the imaginary unit, i, defined by i² = −1. A number like 3 + 4i, for example, can be represented simply as the pair (3, 4). In that sense, nothing about them requires storing more numerical information than two real numbers would. That raises a natural question sitting underneath a century of quantum mechanics. The theory is written...

Composite image of the Galactic Center showing infrared and radio emission

Galactic Center composite · Image credit: Research team

Science The First Sugar Between the Stars

Izaskun Jiménez-Serra on a fragile molecule and its path to early Earth

For much of modern astrochemistry, the formation of molecules has been understood as a gradual process. Simple compounds form first. Slightly larger...

LiDAR image of the Fazenda Atlântica archaeological site in Acre, Brazil

Fazenda Atlântica archaeological site, Acre, Brazil · LiDAR: M. Pärssinen and F. de Novaes

On the Bookshelf Civilization Written Into the Land

Alceu Ranzi and Martti Pärssinen on the Aquiry civilization

Before satellites and laser scans confirmed a civilization of possibly millions once thrived in the western Amazon, Brazilian geographer Alceu Ranzi and Finnish...

Encounters

Glacier Walk Iceland © Saumya Kesurvala

Among Mountains and Glaciers

Enter the Gallery

Our Narratives is a place where contributors share the ideas, stories, and discoveries that move us forward, inspiring each other toward a better future.

From the Magazine

Katharina Glöckl and Raffael Spachtholz beside the scanning tunneling microscope used in the experiment

Science

A Camera for the Electron

Glöckl and Spachtholz on ultrafast electrons

Some experiments reveal, above all, the limits of what can be known. In July, researchers at the Regensburg Center for Ultrafast Nanoscopy, working with...

The restored Borges Labyrinth viewed from above on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore

Architecture

Time Is Itself an Architect

Renata Codello on the Borges Labyrinth

A labyrinth, by definition, resists being fully known from within it. You can walk its paths, but you cannot see its whole shape while you are inside it. That is...

A protocell drifting in the shallow, mineral-rich waters of the early Earth, with a fatty membrane enclosing a strand of RNA

Science

Before the First Cell

When chemistry became biology

Somewhere on the early Earth, between three and four billion years ago, chemistry became biology. No one knows exactly where, how, or how many times it might...