Quantum theory

Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog.Imagine if all our scientific theories and models told us only about averages: if the best weather forecasts could only give you the average daily amount of rain expected over the next month, or if astronomers could only predict the average time between solar eclipses. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log […]

Physicists know how to use quantum theory—your phone and computer give plenty of evidence of that. But knowing how to use it is a far cry from fully understanding the world the theory describes—or even what the various mathematical devices scientists use in the theory are supposed to mean. One such mathematical object, whose status […]

The idea that we can trust what we observe leads to the paradoxical conclusion that we can’t trust what we observe.

Can information ever be rescued from inside a black hole?