A powerful mathematical technique is used to model melting ice and other phenomena. But it has long been imperiled by certain “nightmare scenarios.” A new proof has removed that obstacle. The post A New Proof Smooths Out the Math of Melting first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Randomness is essential to some research, but it’s always been prohibitively complicated. Now, we can use “pseudorandomness” instead. The post The High Cost of Quantum Randomness Is Dropping first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
A popular hypothesis for how the brain clears molecular waste, which may help explain why sleep feels refreshing, is a subject of debate. The post The Mysterious Flow of Fluid in the Brain first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
A simple, widely used mathematical technique can finally be applied to boundlessly complex problems. The post Three Hundred Years Later, a Tool from Isaac Newton Gets an Update first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
A growing body of work suggests that cell metabolism — the chemical reactions that provide energy and building materials — plays a vital, overlooked role in the first steps of life. The post How Metabolism Can Shape Cells’ Destinies first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
One of the most important events in the history of life on Earth was the emergence of multicellularity. In this episode, Will Ratcliff discusses how his snowflake yeast models provide insight into what drove the transition from single-celled to multicellular organisms. The post H … | Continue reading
Last year, an enormous map of the cosmos hinted that the engine driving cosmic expansion might be sputtering. Now physicists are back with an even bigger map, and a stronger conclusion. The post Is Dark Energy Getting Weaker? New Evidence Strengthens the Case. first appeared on Q … | Continue reading
It’s been difficult to find important questions that quantum computers can answer faster than classical machines, but a new algorithm appears to do it for some critical optimization tasks. The post Quantum Speedup Found for Huge Class of Hard Problems first appeared on Quanta Mag … | Continue reading
The deceptively simple Kakeya conjecture has bedeviled mathematicians for 50 years. A new proof of the conjecture in three dimensions illuminates a whole crop of related problems. The post ‘Once in a Century’ Proof Settles Math’s Kakeya Conjecture first appeared on Quanta Magazin … | Continue reading
Steven Strogatz and Janna Levin return for a new season on major scientific and mathematical questions of our time, with 12 all-new episodes and a new format. The post New Conversations, Deep Questions, Bold Ideas in Season Four of ‘The Joy of Why’ first appeared on Quanta Magazi … | Continue reading
Astronomers are ready to search for the fingerprints of life in faraway planetary atmospheres. But first, they need to know where to look — and that means figuring out which planets are likely to have atmospheres in the first place. The post The Road Map to Alien Life Passes Thro … | Continue reading
Larger models can pull off greater feats, but the accessibility and efficiency of smaller models make them attractive tools. The post Why Do Researchers Care About Small Language Models? first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
In math and computer science, researchers have long understood that some questions are fundamentally unanswerable. Now physicists are exploring how even ordinary physical systems put hard limits on what we can predict, even in principle. The post ‘Next-Level’ Chaos Traces the Tru … | Continue reading
Rare and powerful compounds, known as keystone molecules, can build a web of invisible interactions among species. The post A New, Chemical View of Ecosystems first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
A new proof extends the work of the late Maryam Mirzakhani, cementing her legacy as a pioneer of alien mathematical realms. The post Years After the Early Death of a Math Genius, Her Ideas Gain New Life first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
By training machine learning models with enough examples of basic science, Miles Cranmer hopes to push the pace of scientific discovery forward. The post The Physicist Working to Build Science-Literate AI first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Physicists and marine biologists built a quantitative framework that predicts how coral polyps collectively construct a variety of coral shapes. The post The ‘Elegant’ Math Model That Could Help Rescue Coral Reefs first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Physicists hope that understanding the churning region near singularities might help them reconcile gravity and quantum mechanics. The post New Maps of the Bizarre, Chaotic Space-Time Inside Black Holes first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
By screening films in a brain scanner, neuroscientists discovered a rich library of neural scripts — from a trip through an airport to a marriage proposal — that form scaffolds for memories of our experiences. The post How ‘Event Scripts’ Structure Our Personal Memories first app … | Continue reading
Britta Späth has dedicated her career to proving a single, central conjecture. She’s finally succeeded, alongside her partner, Marc Cabanes. The post After 20 Years, Math Couple Solves Major Group Theory Problem first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Ten years ago, researchers proved that adding full memory can theoretically aid computation. They’re just now beginning to understand the implications. The post Catalytic Computing Taps the Full Power of a Full Hard Drive first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
A new proof reveals the answer to the decades-old “moving sofa” problem. It highlights how even the simplest optimization problems can have counterintuitive answers. The post The Largest Sofa You Can Move Around a Corner first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Quantum calculations amount to sophisticated estimates. But in 1931, Hans Bethe intuited precisely how a chain of particles would behave — an insight that had far-reaching consequences. The post How Hans Bethe Stumbled Upon Perfect Quantum Theories first appeared on Quanta Magazi … | Continue reading
A young computer scientist and two colleagues show that searches within data structures called hash tables can be much faster than previously deemed possible. The post Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Emmy Noether showed that fundamental physical laws are just a consequence of simple symmetries. A century later, her insights continue to shape physics. The post How Noether’s Theorem Revolutionized Physics first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
By treating DNA as a language, Brian Hie’s “ChatGPT for genomes” could pick up patterns that humans can’t see, accelerating biological design. The post The Poetry Fan Who Taught an LLM to Read and Write DNA first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
By proving a broader version of Hilbert’s famous 10th problem, two groups of mathematicians have expanded the realm of mathematical unknowability. The post New Proofs Probe the Limits of Mathematical Truth first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
Recent results show that large language models struggle with compositional tasks, suggesting a hard limit to their abilities. The post Chatbot Software Begins to Face Fundamental Limitations first appeared on Quanta Magazine | Continue reading
This special issue of Quanta Magazine explores the ultimate scientific quest: the search for the fundamental nature of reality. | Continue reading
The mathematics behind the halting problem is interesting enough, but what’s really fascinating is the community that coalesced. A republic of numbers. adactio.com/links/21263 | Continue reading
clear explanation of Apollonian circle packing and disproving the local-global conjecture # | Continue reading
Solve these puzzle questions to level up your Wordle game. | Continue reading
A team of physicists has entangled three photons over a considerable distance, which could lead to more powerful quantum cryptography. | Continue reading
A comprehensive mathematical framework treats wrinkling patterns as elegant solutions to geometric problems. | Continue reading
The positively charged particle at the heart of the atom is an object of unspeakable complexity, one that changes its appearance depending on how it is probed. We’ve attempted to connect the proton’s many faces to form the most complete picture yet. | Continue reading
Harry Halpin wants our internet conversations to be more private. He’s helped create a new kind of network that might make it possible. | Continue reading
Recent explorations of unique geometric worlds reveal perplexing patterns, including the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio. | Continue reading
Letting human brain organoids grow in animal brains could be an ethical new option for experimental studies of neurological disorders. | Continue reading
In his senior year of high school, Daniel Larsen proved a key theorem about Carmichael numbers — strange entities that mimic the primes. “It would be a paper that any mathematician would be really proud to have written,” said one mathematician. | Continue reading
Efforts to build a better digital “nose” suggest that our perception of scents reflects both the structure of aromatic molecules and the metabolic processes that make them. | Continue reading
The decades-old Sullivan’s conjecture, about the best way to minimize the surface area of a bubble cluster, was thought to be out of reach for three bubbles and up — until a new breakthrough result. | Continue reading
Carolyn Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022 for their development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry. | Continue reading
The quantum physicists Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger have won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics. | Continue reading
Svante Pääbo has been awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for studying our extinct ancestors’ DNA. | Continue reading
Readers rescued a Star Trek crew from a probabilistic predicament armed only with the power of mathematical reasoning. | Continue reading
Even though we’ve learned a lot about this relative of smallpox, some mysteries remain due to a lack of political will. | Continue reading
In 2020, researchers reported that they had created a room-temperature superconductor. That paper has now been retracted. | Continue reading
Of all the endless questions children and mathematicians have asked about infinity, one of the most fascinating has to do with its size. | Continue reading