Bookmarks (45)

Paradoxically, natural selection can sometimes seem to block organisms from evolving useful adaptations. But a new study of “fitness landscapes” and antibiotic resistance in bacteria shows that life still finds a way. The post Evolving Bacteria Can Evade Barriers to ‘Peak’ Fitness first appeared on Quanta Magazine

How Fermat’s less famous "little theorem" got mathematicians young and old to play with prime-like Carmichael numbers. The post Pierre de Fermat’s Link to a High School Student’s Prime Math Proof first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Sitting alongside the neurons in your enteric nervous system are underappreciated glial cells, which play key roles in digestion and disease that scientists are only just starting to understand. The post In the Gut’s ‘Second Brain,’ Key Agents of Health Emerge first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Three computer scientists have disproved a long-standing conjecture about a fundamental problem involving imperfect information. The post Researchers Refute a Widespread Belief About Online Algorithms first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Some strange mathematical sequences are always whole numbers — until they’re not. The puzzling patterns have revealed ties to graph theory and prime numbers, awing mathematicians. The post The Astonishing Behavior of Recursive Sequences first appeared on Quanta Magazine

By bringing together disparate approaches, machines can reach a new level of creative problem-solving. The post AI System Beats Chess Puzzles With ‘Artificial Brainstorming’ first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Scientists have recently discovered scores of free-floating worlds that defy classification. The new observations have forced them to rethink their theories of star and planet formation. The post Rogue Worlds Throw Planetary Ideas Out of Orbit first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The discovery that the brain has different systems for representing small and large numbers provokes new questions about memory, attention and mathematics. The post Why the Human Brain Perceives Small Numbers Better first appeared on Quanta Magazine

In the rumbles and groans of underwater volcanoes, Jackie Caplan-Auerbach finds her favorite harmonies — and clues to the Earth’s interior. The post The Scientist Who Decodes the Songs of Undersea Volcanoes first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Three researchers have found a long-sought way to pull information from large databases secretly, moving us closer to fully private internet searches. The post Cryptographers Solve Decades-Old Privacy Problem first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn appear to have subsurface oceans — tantalizing targets in the search for life beyond Earth. But it’s not clear why these seas exist at all. The post These Moons Are Dark and Frozen. So How Can They Have Oceans? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Quadratic reciprocity lurks around many corners in mathematics. By proving it, number theorists reimagined their whole field. The post The Hidden Connection That Changed Number Theory first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The discovery earlier this year of the “hat” tile marked the culmination of hundreds of years of work into tiles and their symmetries. The post A Brief History of Tricky Mathematical Tiling first appeared on Quanta Magazine

New work attacks a long-standing barrier to understanding how prime numbers are distributed. The post A New Generation of Mathematicians Pushes Prime Number Barriers first appeared on Quanta Magazine

After identifying interlocking symmetries in mammalian cells, scientists can describe some tissues as liquid crystals — an observation that lays the groundwork for a fluid-dynamic theory of how tissues move. The post Biophysicists Uncover Powerful Symmetries in Living Tissue first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Alexei Efros has spent his career learning how machines see differently from humans. Now he’s helping to bridge the gap. The post The Computing Pioneer Helping AI See first appeared on Quanta Magazine

What makes a quantum computer more powerful than a classical computer? It’s a surprisingly subtle question that physicists are still grappling with, decades into the quantum age. The post The Quest to Quantify Quantumness first appeared on Quanta Magazine

For decades, researchers have debated whether brain cells called astrocytes can signal like neurons. Researchers recently published the best evidence yet that some astrocytes are part of the electrical conversation. The post These Cells Spark Electricity in the Brain. They’re Not Neurons. first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Shor’s algorithm will enable future quantum computers to factor large numbers quickly, undermining many online security protocols. Now a researcher has shown how to do it even faster. The post Thirty Years Later, a Speed Boost for Quantum Factoring first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Eugenio Calabi, who died on September 25, conceived of novel geometric objects that later became fundamental to string theory. The post The Mathematician Who Sculpted the Shape of Space first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Mathematical logic and the code of computer programs are, in an exact way, mirror images of each other. The post The Deep Link Equating Math Proofs and Computer Programs first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Physicists have long suspected that hunks of metal could vibrate in a peculiar way that would be all but invisible. Now physicists have spotted these “demon modes.” The post Invisible ‘Demon’ Discovered in Odd Superconductor first appeared on Quanta Magazine

To better understand how neural networks learn to simulate writing, researchers trained simpler versions on synthetic children’s stories. The post Tiny Language Models Come of Age first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The development of attosecond pulses of light allowed researchers to explore the frame-by-frame movement of electrons. The post Physicists Who Explored Tiny Glimpses of Time Win Nobel Prize first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The spatial intuition behind a three-point turn offers an on-ramp to a century-old geometry problem. The post How Simple Math Moves the Needle first appeared on Quanta Magazine

A new paper establishes a long-conjectured bound about the size of the overlap between sets of lines and points. The post Mathematicians Cross the Line to Get to the Point first appeared on Quanta Magazine

To catch even a whiff of the universe’s earliest epochs — an age of darkness, and one of new light — Cynthia Chiang builds her own equipment. Then she deploys it at the ends of the Earth. The post The Experimental Cosmologist Hunting for the First Sunrise first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Every species develops at its own unique tempo, leaving scientists to wonder what governs their timing. A suite of new findings suggests that cells use basic metabolic processes as clocks. The post What Makes Life Tick? Mitochondria May Keep Time for Cells first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Because tree seedlings don’t grow as well when close to their parents, more tree species can be packed into tropical forests. The post ‘Species Repulsion’ Enables High Biodiversity in Tropical Trees first appeared on Quanta Magazine

On its surface, the Kakeya conjecture is a simple statement about rotating needles. But it underlies a wealth of mathematics. The post A Tower of Conjectures That Rests Upon a Needle first appeared on Quanta Magazine

A new proof breaks a decades-long drought of progress on the problem of estimating the size of triangles created by cramming points into a square. The post The Biggest Smallest Triangle Just Got Smaller first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The preferred “handedness” of biomolecules could have emerged from biased interactions between electrons and magnetic surfaces, new research suggests. The post Magnetism May Have Given Life Its Molecular Asymmetry first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Mathematical proofs based on a technique called diagonalization can be relentlessly contrarian, but they help reveal the limits of algorithms. The post Alan Turing and the Power of Negative Thinking first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Number theorist Andrew Granville on what mathematics really is — and why objectivity is never quite within reach. The post Why Mathematical Proof Is a Social Compact first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Sticking out your tongue while doing delicate work with your hands reveals a history of evolutionary relationships. The post The Hidden Brain Connections Between Our Hands and Tongues first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Quantum computing is still really, really hard. But the rise of a powerful class of error-correcting codes suggests that the task might be slightly more feasible than many feared. The post New Codes Could Make Quantum Computing 10 Times More Efficient first appeared on Quanta Magazine

A five-year “adversarial collaboration” of consciousness theorists led to a stagy showdown in front of an audience. It crowned no winners — but it can still claim progress. The post What a Contest of Consciousness Theories Really Proved first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The telescope conjecture gave mathematicians a handle on ways to map one sphere to another. Now that it has been disproved, the universe of shapes has exploded. The post An Old Conjecture Falls, Making Spheres a Lot More Complicated first appeared on Quanta Magazine

In their jiggles and shakes, red giant stars encode a record of the magnetic fields near their cores. The post Quaking Giants Might Solve the Mysteries of Stellar Magnetism first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Why did mammals, grasses and some other groups of organisms explode in diversity only after millions of years? The evolutionary biologist Andreas Wagner plumbs the secrets of those “sleeping beauties.” The post Andreas Wagner Pursues the Secrets to Evolutionary Success first appeared on Quanta Magazine

New results break with decades of conventional wisdom for the gradient descent algorithm. The post Risky Giant Steps Can Solve Optimization Problems Faster first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Mathematicians thought they were on the cusp of proving a conjecture about the ancient structures known as Apollonian circles. But a summer project would lead to its downfall. The post Two Students Unravel a Widely Believed Math Conjecture first appeared on Quanta Magazine

By watching “minimal” cells regain the fitness they lost, researchers are testing whether a genome can be too simple to evolve. The post Even Synthetic Life Forms With a Tiny Genome Can Evolve first appeared on Quanta Magazine

New observations of a faraway rocky world that might have its own magnetic field could help astronomers understand the seemingly haphazard magnetic fields swaddling our solar system’s planets. The post Exoplanets Could Help Us Learn How Planets Make Magnetism first appeared on Quanta Magazine