First-Year Graduate Student Finds Paradoxical Set
No two pairs have the same sum; add three numbers together, and you can get any...
How Math Has Changed the Shape of Gerrymandering | Quanta Magazine
New tools make it possible to detect hidden manipulation of maps. The post How Math Has...
Data Compression Drives the Internet. Here’s How It Works.
One student’s desire to get out of a final exam led to the ubiquitous algorithm that...
How 3D Changes in the Genome Turned Sharks Into Skates | Quanta Magazine
Changes in the 3D structure of their genome gave skates and rays their distinctive winglike fins...
Is It Real or Imagined? How Your Brain Tells the Difference.
New experiments show that the brain distinguishes between perceived and imagined mental images by checking whether...
Some Neural Networks Learn Language Like Humans | Quanta Magazine
Researchers uncover striking parallels in the ways that humans and machine learning models acquire language skills....
Secret Messages Can Hide in AI-Generated Media | Quanta Magazine
In steganography, an ordinary message masks the presence of a secret communication. Humans can never do...
Are There Reasons to Believe in a Multiverse?
Several areas of physics suggest reasons to think that unobservable universes with different natural laws could...
New Math Shows When Solar Systems Become Unstable | Quanta Magazine
For the first time, mathematicians have proved that planetary orbits in a solar system will always...
The Tiny Physics Behind Immense Cosmic Eruptions | Quanta Magazine
A new theory describes how particle interactions fuel fast magnetic reconnection, the process behind solar flares...
Chatbots Don’t Know What Stuff Isn’t
Today’s language models are more sophisticated than ever, but they still struggle with the concept of...
A Plan to Address the World’s Challenges With Math | Quanta Magazine
Minhyong Kim is leading a new initiative called Mathematics for Humanity that encourages mathematicians to apply...
A Mutation Turned Ants Into Parasites in One Generation
A new genetics study of ant “social parasites” shows how complex sets of features can emerge...
A New Theory for the Assembly of Life in the Universe | Quanta Magazine
If we want to understand complex constructions, such as ourselves, assembly theory says we must account...
Is Perpetual Motion Possible at the Quantum Level? | Quanta Magazine
A new phase of matter called a “time crystal” plays with our expectations of thermodynamics. The...
How a Human Smell Receptor Works Is Finally Revealed | Quanta Magazine
After decades of frustration, researchers have finally determined how an airborne scent molecule links to a...
How Can Some Infinities Be Bigger Than Others? | Quanta Magazine
All infinities go on forever, so how is it possible for some infinities to be larger...
Primitive Asgard Cells Show Life on the Brink of Complexity
As researchers race to cultivate more of the intriguing cells from the deep seafloor, the few...
The Electron Is So Round That It’s Ruling Out New Particles | Quanta Magazine
If the electron’s charge wasn’t perfectly round, it could reveal the existence of hidden particles. A...
‘Alien Calculus’ Could Save Particle Physics From Infinities | Quanta Magazine
In the math of particle physics, every calculation should result in infinity. The set of techniques...
Hobbyist Finds Math’s Elusive ‘Einstein’ Tile | Quanta Magazine
The surprisingly simple tile is the first single, connected tile that can fill the entire plane...
How a DNA ‘Parasite’ May Have Fragmented Our Genes
A novel type of “jumping gene” may explain why the genomes of complex cells aren’t all...
Astronomers Dig Up the Stars That Birthed the Milky Way
There once was a cosmic seed that sprouted the Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers have discovered its...
Emmy Murphy Is a Mathematician Who Finds Beauty in Flexibility
The prize-winning geometer feels most fulfilled when exploring the fertile ground where constraint meets creation. The...
Wormhole Experiment Called Into Question
Last fall, a team of physicists announced that they had teleported a qubit through a holographic...
The Unpredictable Abilities Emerging From Large AI Models
Large language models like ChatGPT are now big enough that they’ve started to display startling, unpredictable...
Shadows in the Big Bang Afterglow Reveal Invisible Cosmic Structures
Cosmologists are using secondary signatures from the cosmic microwave background to map the universe’s hidden matter....
The Researcher Who Would Teach Machines to Be Fair
Arvind Narayanan uses quantitative methods to expose and correct the misuse of quantitative methods. The post...
Can We Program Our Cells?
By genetically instructing cells to perform tasks that they wouldn’t in nature, synthetic biologists can learn...
Room-Temperature Superconductor Discovery Meets With Resistance | Quanta Magazine
A paper in Nature reports the discovery of a superconductor that operates at room temperatures and...
Black Holes Will Destroy All Quantum States, Researchers Argue | Quanta Magazine
New calculations suggest that the event horizons around black holes will ‘decohere’ quantum possibilities — even...
Strange Solar Gamma Rays Discovered at Even Higher Energies
There appear to be too many gamma rays coming from the sun. New higher-energy measurements reveal...
Physicists Use Quantum Mechanics to Pull Energy out of Nothing
The quantum energy teleportation protocol was proposed in 2008 and largely ignored. Now two independent experiments...
Quantum Field Theory Pries Open Mathematical Puzzle | Quanta Magazine
Mathematicians have struggled to understand the moduli space of graphs. A new paper uses tools from...
Mathematicians Complete Quest to Build ‘Spherical Cubes’
Is it possible to fill space “cubically” with shapes that act like spheres? A proof at...