10. April 2025 | Press releases:

What’s going on in the quantum year in Lower Saxony? TU Braunschweig, Lower Saxony and the world celebrate the 100th anniversary of quantum physics in 2025

When physicists such as Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger first described the wild leaps of quanta in 1925, this not only opened up a deeper insight into nature. As understanding of the new quantum rules grew, transistors and lasers became indispensable technologies. 100 years after the first quantum leaps, researchers at the QuantumFrontiers Cluster of Excellence no longer just follow the course of the quantum, but control and manipulate individual particles in optical clocks and quantum computers. Reason enough to celebrate the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology together with the United Nations in 2025. And with these events, even novices to the quantum world can experience what entanglement and superposition are all about.

Science Watch Party

“This is not how quantum physics works.” Tony Stark, alias Marvel’s Iron Man, is justifiably sceptical. The idea of time travel contradicts everything he thinks to know about quantum physics. But is it just fiction, or is there science behind the scripts of the gripping blockbusters? Take a look behind Hollywood’s quantum chatter at the Science Watch Party with Dr Hans Werner Schumacher and Dr Teresa Tschirner – including snacks and drinks.

  • 11.04.2025; 18.00-19.30
  • Lecture hall SN19.2 in the Altgebäude of TU Braunschweig, Pockelsstraße 4, 38106 Braunschweig
  • Register here free of charge

Performance exhibition: Why is space-time curved?

What actually are quanta? And why are we looking for dark matter? For their project ‘Why is spacetime curved?’, physicist Lea Richtmann and artist Miriam Ebbing have prepared an artistic journey through questions of physics. In an interplay of art and science, a performance exhibition was created that approaches the complex questions with music, projections and video art. Experience light, quanta and gravity with different senses and marvel at their various manifestations – and perhaps a new question will arise here and there.

  • 25 & 26 April 2025; 19:30 both evenings
  • RAMPE, Gerhardtstraße 3, 30167 Hanover
  • Free entry

Concert series: TIME

It would be a scientific sensation and at the same time sensationally incomprehensible to the public. Hardly any other quantum physics technology has more influence on physics than high-precision clocks, and at the same time permeates people’s everyday lives literally around the clock. With ‘TIME’, researchers from the QuantumFrontiers Cluster of Excellence are joining forces with the Braunschweig Young Chamber Choir to bring together scientific and social engagement with time in a series of concerts. The programme combines popular science pitches on current research topics such as optical clocks and the search for the limits of physics with a capella literature from different eras on the perception and conception of time.

  • 13.06.2025, 19:30, Audimax of TU Braunschweig
  • 14.06.2025, 15:30, Aula am Wilhelmsplatz of Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
  • 15.06.2025, 17:00, Audimax of Leibniz University Hannover

Take a (quantum) leap into the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB)

Well, what’s going on at the PTB? Have there been cats running around the site recently? Well, not really. At least not if ‘Felis catus’, the common house cat, is meant. But physics also has its cats, the Schrödinger cats. You can meet them at PTB wherever quantum physics is involved – for example in atomic clocks, in quantum computers or in all laboratories where quantum technology is involved. So feel free to drop by for a (quantum) leap! The lab doors are wide open, even those that are not about quantum technology. A variety-packed programme is included.

  • Open day on 13 September 2025