Every second, hundreds to thousands of molecules move through thousands of nuclear pores in each of your cells. A new high-definition view reveals the machine in action. The post Disorder Drives One of Nature’s Most Complex Machines first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
A straightforward conjecture about runners moving around a track turns out to be equivalent to many complex mathematical questions. Three new proofs mark the first significant progress on the problem in decades. The post New Strides Made on Deceptively Simple ‘Lonely R … | Continue reading
Columnist Natalie Wolchover explores whether applied category theory can be “green” math. The post Can the Most Abstract Math Make the World a Better Place? first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Microscopic crystals extracted from meteorites could help settle a debate about the birth of our patch of the Milky Way. The post What Crystals Older Than the Sun Reveal About the Start of the Solar System first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Growing tissues can crack, break, and dissociate to form structures that can later withstand immense forces. The post Break It To Make It: How Fracturing Sculpts Tissues and Organs first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
In an 1874 paper, Georg Cantor proved that there are different sizes of infinity and changed math forever. A trove of newly unearthed letters shows that it was also an act of plagiarism. The post The Man Who Stole Infinity first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Intuition breaks down once we’re dealing with the endless. To begin with: Some infinities are bigger than others. The post How Can Infinity Come in Many Sizes? first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
The planet is getting hotter, but one factor in particular makes it hard to tell just how hot it will get. Physicists and computer scientists are racing to solve the problem of clouds. The post Climate Physicists Face the Ghosts in Their Machines: Clouds first appeared … | Continue reading
Innovations in imaging and genetic engineering are coming together to probe the biophysics of cytoplasm inside living animals. The post The Biophysical World Inside a Jam-Packed Cell first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Henry Yuen is developing a new mathematical language to describe problems whose inputs and outputs aren’t ordinary numbers. The post A New Complexity Theory for the Quantum Age first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Columnist Philip Ball thinks the phenomenon of decoherence might finally bridge the quantum-classical divide. The post Are the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics Beginning To Dissolve? first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
We describe electricity as a flow, but that’s not what happens in a typical wire. Physicists have begun to induce electrons to act like fluids, an effort that could illuminate new ways of thinking about quantum systems. The post Physicists Make Electrons Flow Like Wate … | Continue reading
Machine learning is helping neuroscientists organize vast quantities of cells’ genetic data in the latest neurobiological cartography effort. The post Fed on Reams of Cell Data, AI Maps New Neighborhoods in the Brain first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Mathematicians finally understand the behavior of an important class of differential equations that describe everything from water pressure to oxygen levels in human tissues. The post Long-Sought Proof Tames Some of Math’s Unruliest Equations first appeared on Quanta M … | Continue reading
How physically magnifying objects using a key ingredient in diapers has opened an unprecedented view of the microbial world. The post Expansion Microscopy Has Transformed How We See the Cellular World first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Today’s observatories document every pulse and flash in the sky each night. To understand how the cosmos has changed over longer periods, scientists rely on a more tactile technology. The post How Modern and Antique Technologies Reveal a Dynamic Cosmos first appeared o … | Continue reading
New experiments reveal how astrocytes tune neuronal activity to modulate our mental and emotional states. The results suggest that neuron-only brain models, such as connectomes, leave out a crucial layer of regulation. The post Once Thought To Support Neurons, Astrocyt … | Continue reading
Mathematicians are still trying to understand fundamental properties of the Fourier transform, one of their most ubiquitous and powerful tools. A new result marks an exciting advance toward that goal. The post Networks Hold the Key to a Decades-Old Problem About Waves … | Continue reading
Columnist Natalie Wolchover checks in with particle physicists more than a decade after the field entered a profound crisis. The post Is Particle Physics Dead, Dying, or Just Hard? first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Primordial black holes could rewrite our understanding of dark matter and the early universe. A record-breaking detection at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea has some physicists wondering if we just spotted one. The post Monster Neutrino Could Be a Messenger of Anci … | Continue reading
Researchers recorded the neurons that shape directional navigation as bats explored a remote island off the coast of Tanzania. The post How Animals Build a Sense of Direction first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
The Bonnet problem asks when just a bit of information is enough to uniquely identify a whole surface. The post Two Twisty Shapes Resolve a Centuries-Old Topology Puzzle first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
The math of data structures helps us understand how different storage systems come with different trade-offs between resources such as time and memory. The post Why There’s No Single Best Way To Store Information first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
In an unprecedented step, researchers crafted a detailed model compatible with the universe’s accelerated expansion. The post String Theory Can Now Describe a Universe That Has Dark Energy first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
The discovery that tissues use electricity to expel unhealthy cells is part of a surge of renewed interest in the currents flowing through our bodies. The post Cells Use ‘Bioelectricity’ To Coordinate and Make Group Decisions first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
A $1 million prize awaits anyone who can show where the math of fluid flow breaks down. With specially trained AI systems, researchers have found a slew of new candidates in simpler versions of the problem. The post Using AI, Mathematicians Find Hidden Glitches in Flui … | Continue reading
Is the inside of a vision model at all like a language model? Researchers argue that as the models grow more powerful, they may be converging toward a singular “Platonic” way to represent the world. The post Distinct AI Models Seem To Converge On How They Encode Realit … | Continue reading
Try as they might, scientists can’t truly rid a space or an object of its energy. But what “zero-point energy” really means is up for interpretation. The post In Quantum Mechanics, Nothingness Is the Potential To Be Anything first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Research into how a father’s choices, including diet, exercise, stress and nicotine use, may transfer traits to his children epigenetically has become impossible to ignore. The post How Dad’s Fitness May Be Packaged and Passed Down in Sperm RNA first appeared on Quanta … | Continue reading
Explore a shape that can’t pass through itself, a teenage prodigy, and two new kinds of infinity. The post The Year in Mathematics first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Physicists spotted a “terribly exciting” new black hole, doubled down on weakening dark energy, and debated the meaning of quantum mechanics. The post The Year in Physics first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Explore the year’s most surprising computational revelations, including a new fundamental relationship between time and space, an undergraduate who overthrew a 40-year-old conjecture, and the unexpectedly effortless triggers that can turn AI evil. The post The Year in … | Continue reading
Take a jaunt through a jungle of strange neurons underlying your sense of touch, hundreds of millions of years of animal evolution and the dense neural networks of brains and AIs. The post The Year in Biology first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Years ago, an audacious Fields medalist outlined a sweeping program that, he claimed, could be used to resolve a major problem in algebraic geometry. Other mathematicians had their doubts. Now he says he has a proof. The post String Theory Inspires a Brilliant, Bafflin … | Continue reading
Large language models such as ChatGPT come with filters to keep certain info from getting out. A new mathematical argument shows that systems like this can never be completely safe. The post Cryptographers Show That AI Protections Will Always Have Holes first appeared … | Continue reading
A newly proposed explanation for the slipperiness of ice has revived a centuries-long debate. The post Why Is Ice Slippery? A New Hypothesis Slides Into the Chat. first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Is language core to thought, or a separate process? For 15 years, the neuroscientist Ev Fedorenko has gathered evidence of a language network in the human brain — and has found some parallels to LLMs. The post The Polyglot Neuroscientist Resolving How the Brain Parses … | Continue reading
By combining the language of groups with that of geometry and linear algebra, Marius Sophus Lie created one of math’s most powerful tools. The post What Are Lie Groups? first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Researchers have used metamathematical techniques to show that certain theorems that look superficially distinct are in fact logically equivalent. The post ‘Reverse Mathematics’ Illuminates Why Hard Problems Are Hard first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
The supercollider is now being used to explore quantum phenomena, including a “magic” form of quantum entanglement. The post Particle Physicists Detect ‘Magic’ at the Large Hadron Collider first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
The newly described microbe represents a world of parasitic, intercellular biodiversity only beginning to be revealed by genome sequencing. The post A Cell So Minimal That It Challenges Definitions of Life first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Descriptive set theorists study the niche mathematics of infinity. Now, they’ve shown that their problems can be rewritten in the concrete language of algorithms. The post A New Bridge Links the Strange Math of Infinity to Computer Science first appeared on Quanta Maga … | Continue reading
Encouraged by successes in understanding black holes, theoretical physicists are applying what they’ve learned to whole universes. What they’re finding has them questioning fundamental assumptions about how physics ought to be done. The post Cosmic Paradox Reveals the … | Continue reading
Has the secret to understanding gravity been hiding in plain sight for nearly 40 years? The post Old ‘Ghost’ Theory of Quantum Gravity Makes a Comeback first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
The physics of mixing water layers — an interplay of wind, climate and more — makes lakes work. When it stops, impacts can ripple across an ecosystem. The post Mixing Is the Heartbeat of Deep Lakes. At Crater Lake, It’s Slowing Down. first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Mathematicians have broken through a long-standing barrier in the study of “minimizing surfaces,” which play an important role in both math and physics. The post New Proofs Probe Soap-Film Singularities first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Marijn Heule uses turns mathematical statements into something like Sudoku puzzles, then has computers go to work on them. His proofs have been called “disgusting,” but they go beyond what any human can do. The post To Have Machines Make Math Proofs, Turn Them Into a P … | Continue reading
Quantum mechanics has at last been formulated exclusively with real numbers, bringing a mathematical puzzle at the heart of the theory into a new era of inquiry. The post Physicists Take the Imaginary Numbers Out of Quantum Mechanics first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading