One of the most powerful, yet counterintuitive, ideas in all of physics is wave-particle duality. It states that whenever a quantum propagates through space freely, without being observed-and-measured, it exhibits wave-like behavior, doing things like diffracting and interfering not only with other quanta, but with itself. However, whenever that very same quantum is observed-and-measured, or compelled to interact with another quantum in a fashion that reveals its quantum state, it loses its wave-like characteristics and instead behaves like a particle. First discovered in the early 20th century in experiments involving light, it’s now known to apply to all quanta, including electrons and even composite particles such as atomic nuclei.
Attoseconds aren???t fast enough for particle physics
One of the biggest news stories of 2023 in the world of physics was the Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded to a trio of…