~quanta-magazine | Bookmarks (38)

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

Genetic elements called Mavericks that have some viral features could be responsible for the large-scale smuggling of DNA between species. The post Selfish, Virus-Like DNA Can Carry Genes Between Species first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Inside of a black hole, the two theoretical pillars of 20th-century physics appear to clash. Now a group of young physicists think they have resolved the conflict by appealing to the central pillar of the new century — the physics of quantum information. The post Quantum Complexity Shows How to Escape Hawking’s Black Hole Paradox first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The numbers count a variety of seemingly unrelated mathematical structures. The post Ninth Dedekind Number Found by Two Independent Groups first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Yael Tauman Kalai’s breakthroughs secure our digital world, from cloud computing to our quantum future. The post The Cryptographer Who Ensures We Can Trust Our Computers first appeared on Quanta Magazine