You would be forgiven for thinking that real numbers are, in fact, real — the word is right there in the name. But physicist Nicolas Gisin doesn’t think so. He’s not questioning the mathematical ...

Several years ago one of us, Toni, asked another of us, Marco, to come to his office at the Institute of Photonic Sciences, a large research center in Castelldefels near Barcelona. “There is a problem ...

Imaginary numbers might seem like unicorns and goblins — interesting but irrelevant to reality. But for describing matter at its roots, imaginary numbers turn out to be essential. They seem to be ...

What is the most bizarre real number that you can imagine? Probably many people think of an irrational number such as pi (π) or Euler’s number. And indeed, such values can be considered “wild.” After ...

For 50 years, mathematicians have believed that the total number of real numbers is unknowable. A new proof suggests otherwise. In October 2018, David Asperó was on holiday in Italy, gazing out a car ...

Real and imaginary: The time-dependent Schrödinger equation formulated using complex numbers. (Courtesy: iStock/piranka) Complex numbers are essential to achieve the most accurate quantum-mechanical ...

A century ago, the strange behavior of atoms and elementary particles led physicists to formulate a new theory of nature. That theory, quantum mechanics, found immediate success, proving its worth ...