Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Imaginary numbers push the boundaries of calculus and other branches of math. Hill Street Studios/DigitalVision via Getty Images ...

Physicists have built a real-number version of quantum mechanics that makes all the same predictions as the standard theory, resolving a question that's simmered since the field began.

Physicists from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) have examined a fundamental property of quantum mechanics in collaboration with the German Aerospace Center (DLR). In the scientific ...

For the first time, physicists have built a working version of quantum mechanics without complex numbers — numbers that have been considered essential to the theory for nearly a century. Complex ...

Imaginary numbers can seem confusing at first, but they play a powerful role in mathematics and real-world applications. This guide explains what imaginary numbers are, why they exist, and how they ...

All non-trivial zeros of the zeta function have real part one-half. Unfortunately, all those negative even numbers are trivial zeros. So … where are these non-trivial ones? To answer that, I must take ...

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It should be impossible to measure an imaginary number in the lab, but a group of researchers have found a way to do so. They produced the equivalent of a magnetic field of imaginary strength, meaning ...

To a nonmathematician, having the letter "i" represent a number that does not quite exist and is "imaginary" can be hard to wrap your head around. If you open your mind to this way of thinking, ...