Comment in 2025

Quantum education in the UK is fragmented and poorly advertised. Raising awareness of available training and career pathways will expand and strengthen the quantum workforce and is essential to meeting national quantum ambitions.

Over its 350 years of history, the establishment and evolution of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, reflects the history of scientific institutions in Britain.

Although sensing is one of the more established quantum technologies, translating quantum science into real-world biomedical impact requires further effort to overcome technical hurdles as well as structural and societal challenges.

Traditional approaches in complexity science struggle to capture emergent phenomena, but abductive reasoning — now computationally feasible through artificial intelligence — offers a new pathway for discovery.

Particle accelerators are large-scale, complex projects, and they have some unique challenges when it comes to environmental sustainability. A group of particle accelerator researchers and environmental sustainability experts shares how community-specific guidance can help address these needs.

Half a century ago, two theoretical papers were published that together sparked major new directions — conceptual, mathematical and practically applicable — in several previously disparate fields of science. In this Comment, the authors of one of those papers expose key aspects of the thinking behind them, their implementations and implications, along with sketches of several subsequent and consequential developments.

The debate over the regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) is full of comparisons between the rise of deep learning and the dawn of the nuclear age. It is instructive to ask why these comparisons are so popular.

Among the satellite meetings of the IUPAP StatPhys29 conference was a meeting in Lviv, Ukraine — currently at war. Three of the organizers describe how the meeting came to be and the challenges they faced.

For the past two centuries, researchers have used photography to see the unseen. Today’s scientists can similarly use thoughtful photography to make their work more visible, understandable and shareable.

K2-18 b is the only habitable-zone exoplanet with a detectable atmosphere — initially associated with water vapour, now accepted as being due to methane. Recent observations suggest possible biomarkers. This Comment assesses these shifting conclusions.

A substantial number of female physicists in the first half of the 20th century contributed to quantum physics. For the history of physics to properly recognize their work, new approaches are needed.

Quantum solutions are typically evaluated in terms of performance, efficiency, speedup or the number of qubits — but not energy consumption. Yet quantum computing comes at a high energy cost. To make sure quantum computing is developed energy-efficiently, it is essential to optimize the design of the circuit, and pay attention to aspects such as the circuit layout and how the execution is done on the quantum computer.

As quantum technologies attract more and more funding, Christophe Couteau and Snežana Lazić argue for a clear and accessible definition of the label ‘quantum’. This would help public and private investors to make the right choices.

The Metre Convention was signed in May 1875, bringing international agreement on how to measure accurately and consistently — a consensus that was essential for trade, industrialization and scientific progress. 150 years later, how does the metrology community continue this tradition?

Despite its benefits, globalized science also has problems, including asymmetric data sharing. Understanding the origin of these imbalances can help mitigate their long-term impacts.

To avoid a replication crisis in physics, physicists need to understand how ever-changing social forces shape scientific practice — and even the underlying notions of replicability and objectivity.

There is a natural though unexpected resonance between the concept of intersectionality — the simultaneous and compounded impact of two or more axes of discrimination — and that of emergence in physics.

The way you were taught quantum mechanics depends on when you were a student; pedagogical approaches over the last century have been driven by social and political trends. Physicist and historian, David Kaiser, charts how the emphasis of quantum education has oscillated between philosophy and practicality.

Although the practice of doing physics has a long history, the term ‘physicist’ is less than 200 years old. Historian Iwan Rhys Morus traces the roots of the word and discusses its slow acceptance by the community it came to describe.

The paranormal looms large in pop culture — witness the phenomenon of the Paranormal Activity film franchise — and in the late 19th and early 20th centuries it was of interest to many scientists. What does this history reveal about the boundaries of science?