Number Theorist James Maynard Wins the Fields Medal | Quanta Magazine
On his way to winning a Fields Medal, James Maynard has cut a path through simple-sounding...
Hugo Duminil-Copin Wins the Fields Medal | Quanta Magazine
With Hugo Duminil-Copin, thinking rarely happens without moving. His insights into the flow-related properties of complex...
Can Computers Be Mathematicians? | Quanta Magazine
Artificial intelligence has bested humans at problem-solving challenges like chess and Go. Is mathematics research next?...
Protein Blobs Linked to Alzheimer’s Affect Aging in All Cells | Quanta Magazine
Protein buildups like those seen around neurons in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other brain diseases occur in...
Puzzles on Weighing Truth With a Balance Scale | Quanta Magazine
In recreational mathematics, the balance scale is an endless source of puzzles that require precise and...
AI Makes Strides in Virtual Worlds More Like Our Own | Quanta Magazine
Intelligent beings learn by interacting with the world. Artificial intelligence researchers have adopted a similar strategy...
New Proof Shows When Structure Must Emerge in Graphs | Quanta Magazine
A new proof identifies precisely how large a mathematical graph must be before it contains a...
The Spooky Quantum Phenomenon You’ve Never Heard Of | Quanta Magazine
Quantum computers may derive their power from the “magical” way that properties of particles change depending...
An Immunologist Fights Covid with Tweets and a Nasal Spray | Quanta Magazine
Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist who became a lifeline for the worried and the curious during the...
Special Surfaces Remain Distinct in Four Dimensions | Quanta Magazine
For decades mathematicians have searched for a specific pair of surfaces that can’t be transformed into...
What Is Life? | Quanta Magazine
Without a good definition of life, how do we look for it on alien planets? Steven...
Wheel Made of ‘Odd Matter’ Spontaneously Rolls Uphill | Quanta Magazine
Physicists have solved a key problem of robotic locomotion by revising the usual rules of interaction...
The Brain Has a ‘Low-Power Mode’ That Blunts Our Senses | Quanta Magazine
Neuroscientists uncovered an energy-saving mode in vision-system neurons that works at the cost of being able...
The Computer Scientist Who Parlays Failures Into Breakthroughs | Quanta Magazine
Daniel Spielman solves important problems by thinking hard — about other questions. The post The Computer...
Astronomers Reimagine the Making of the Planets
Observations of faraway planets have forced a near-total rewrite of the story of how our solar...
Researchers Achieve ‘Absurdly Fast’ Algorithm for Network Flow | Quanta Magazine
Computer scientists can now solve a decades-old problem in practically the time it takes to write...
Reshuffled Rivers Bolster the Amazon’s Hyper-Biodiversity | Quanta Magazine
The lush biodiversity of the Amazon may be due in part to the dynamics of branching...
Graduate Student’s Side Project Proves Prime Number Conjecture | Quanta Magazine
Jared Duker Lichtman, 26, has proved a longstanding conjecture relating prime numbers to a broad class...
Brain-Signal Proteins Evolved Before Animals Did | Quanta Magazine
Some animal neuropeptides have been around longer than nervous systems. The post Brain-Signal Proteins Evolved Before...
Impossible-Seeming Surfaces Confirmed Decades After Conjecture | Quanta Magazine
Using ideas borrowed from graph theory, two mathematicians have shown that extremely complex surfaces are easy...
What Is the Langlands Program? | Quanta Magazine
The Langlands program provides a beautifully intricate set of connections between various areas of mathematics, pointing...
How Could Life Evolve From Cyanide? | Quanta Magazine
How did life arise on Earth? Steven Strogatz speaks with the Nobel Prize-winning biologist Jack Szostak...
How to Make the Universe Think for Us | Quanta Magazine
Physicists are building neural networks out of vibrations, voltages and lasers, arguing that the future of...
The Secret Math Behind Mind-Reading Magic Tricks | Quanta Magazine
Four puzzle solutions reveal different ways to divine someone’s hidden number with impossibly little information. The...
How Math Can Improve Your Wordle Score | Quanta Magazine
A bit of information theory can help you analyze — and improve — your Wordle game....
Life’s First Peptides May Have Grown on RNA | Quanta Magazine
RNA and peptides coevolving in the primordial world might have jointly served as a precursor to...
How Computer Scientists Learned to Reinvent the Proof | Quanta Magazine
Why verify every line of a proof, when just a few checks will do? The post...
Simple Gene Circuits Hint at How Stem Cells Differentiate | Quanta Magazine
Synthetic biology experiments suggest a “MultiFate” model for how genetically identical cells become the many different...
Will the James Webb Space Telescope Reveal Another Earth? | Quanta Magazine
The space telescope is one of the most ambitious scientific projects ever undertaken. Marcia Rieke and...
How Complex Is a Knot? New Proof Reveals Ranking System That Works | Quanta Magazine
“Ribbon concordance” will let mathematicians compare knots by linking them across four-dimensional space. The post How...
Puzzling Quantum Scenario Appears Not to Conserve Energy | Quanta Magazine
By resolving a paradox about light in a box, researchers hope to clarify the concept of...
‘Machine Scientists’ Distill the Laws of Physics From Raw Data
Researchers say we’re on the cusp of “GoPro physics,” where a camera can point at an...
Why ‘De-Extinction’ Is Impossible (But Could Work Anyway) | Quanta Magazine
Several projects are aiming to bring back mammoths and other species that have vanished from the...
In Test Tubes, RNA Molecules Evolve Into a Tiny Ecosystem | Quanta Magazine
When researchers gave a genetic molecule the ability to replicate, it evolved over time into a...
Where Do Space, Time and Gravity Come From? | Quanta Magazine
Einstein’s description of curved space-time doesn’t easily mesh with a universe made up of quantum wavefunctions....
How Do Math Magicians Know Your Number? | Quanta Magazine
Mathematical magic can seem like mind reading. Your job is to reveal the secret behind these...
Physicists Show How Quantum Uncertainty Sharpens Measurements | Quanta Magazine
Throwing out data seems to make measurements of distances and angles more precise. The reason why...
Mathematicians Coax Fluid Equations Into Nonphysical Solutions | Quanta Magazine
The famed Navier-Stokes equations can lead to cases where more than one result is possible, but...
Secrets of the Moon’s Permanent Shadows Are Coming to Light | Quanta Magazine
Robots are about to venture into the sunless depths of lunar craters to investigate ancient water...
What Happens When We Give Animals Our Diseases? | Quanta Magazine
While it’s understandable to focus on the diseases affecting humans, it’s important to study how our...
Ancient Genes for Symbiosis Hint at Mitochondria’s Origins | Quanta Magazine
Was the addition of mitochondria a first step in the formation of complex cells or one...
Elegant Six-Page Proof Reveals the Emergence of Random Structure | Quanta Magazine
Two young mathematicians have astonished their colleagues with a full proof of the Kahn-Kalai conjecture —...
New Proof Reveals the Hidden Structure of Common Equations | Quanta Magazine
Van der Waerden’s conjecture mystified mathematicians for 85 years. Its solution shows how polynomial roots relate...
Why Is Inflammation a Dangerous Necessity? | Quanta Magazine
The immune system protects us from a full spectrum of pathogens, but without balance, it can...
Pondering the Bits That Build Space-Time and Brains | Quanta Magazine
Vijay Balasubramanian investigates whether the fabric of the universe might be built from information, and what...
In Worms, Inheritance Beyond Genes Can Help Evolution | Quanta Magazine
Traits from RNA molecules passed between multiple generations of worms can work with genetic changes to...
Researchers Glimpse How AI Gets So Good at Language Processing | Quanta Magazine
Language processing programs are notoriously hard to interpret, but smaller versions can provide important insights into...
Scientists Unravel How the Tonga Volcano Caused Worldwide Tsunamis | Quanta Magazine
The Tonga eruption in January was “basically like Krakatoa 2.” This time, geophysicists could explain the...
Deep Learning Poised to ‘Blow Up’ Famed Fluid Equations | Quanta Magazine
For centuries, mathematicians have tried to prove that Euler’s fluid equations can produce nonsensical answers. A...
Life With Longer Genetic Codes Seems Possible — but Less Likely | Quanta Magazine
Life could use a more expansive genetic code in theory, but new work shows that improving...