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Maggie Chiang for Quanta Magazine

theoretical physics

Physicists Rewrite the Fundamental Law That Leads to Disorder

By Philip Ball
―

The second law of thermodynamics is among the most sacred in all of science, but it has always rested on 19th century arguments about probability. New arguments trace its true source to the flows of quantum information.

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By Philip Ball

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A brown chimpanzee is playing on a yellow smartphone. Three Wordle blocks are above his head, reading 'Bloat," "Watch," and "Chimp"
Quantized Academy

Why Claude Shannon Would Have Been Great at Wordle

By Patrick Honner
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A bit of information theory can help you analyze — and improve — your Wordle game.

Colorized transmission electron micrograph of a polyribosome.
origins of life

Life’s First Peptides May Have Grown on RNA Strands

By Yasemin Saplakoglu
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RNA and peptides coevolving in the primordial world might have jointly served as a precursor to the modern ribosome.

computational complexity

How Computer Scientists Learned to Reinvent the Proof

By Mordechai Rorvig
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Why verify every line of a proof, when just a few checks will do?

Two red loops connected by a ghostly tube.
topology

How Complex Is a Knot? New Proof Reveals Ranking System That Works.

By Leila Sloman
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“Ribbon concordance” will let mathematicians compare knots by linking them across four-dimensional space.

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particle physics

A Deepening Crisis Forces Physicists to Rethink Structure of Nature’s Laws

By Natalie Wolchover
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Physicists are reexamining a longstanding assumption: that big stuff consists of smaller stuff.


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Cells growing in a dish glow in seven different fluorescent colors.
synthetic biology

Simple Gene Circuits Hint at How Stem Cells Find New Identities

By Veronique Greenwood
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Outdoor photo of Leslie Lamport wearing a blue shirt with his hand up to his shoulder
Q&A

How to Write Software With Mathematical Perfection

By Sheon Han
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Leslie Lamport revolutionized how computers talk to each other. Now he’s working on how engineers talk to their machines.

Illustration of a glass box illuminated inside by a red lightbulb. A ray of green light shoots out of the box.
quantum physics

Puzzling Quantum Scenario Appears Not to Conserve Energy

By Katie McCormick
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By resolving a paradox about light in a box, researchers hope to clarify the concept of energy in quantum theory.

astrophysics

Black Hole Image Reveals the Beast Inside the Milky Way’s Heart

By Jonathan O'Callaghan
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In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope released a historic image of a supermassive black hole in another galaxy. The follow-up — an image of Sagittarius A* — shows it shimmering at the center of our own.

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Beyond the Second Law

By Nicole Yunger Halpern
Illustration of various kinds of clocks floating against a pink background.

The New Thermodynamic Understanding of Clocks

By Natalie Wolchover
An illustration of a demon’s face.

How Maxwell’s Demon Continues to Startle Scientists

By Jonathan O'Callaghan

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The Joy of Why

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Illustration of a woman astronomer looking at a map that shows the James Webb Space Telescope capturing images of a distant planet.

Will the James Webb Space Telescope Reveal Another Earth?

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The space telescope is one of the most ambitious scientific projects ever undertaken. Marcia Rieke and Nikole Lewis, two of the scientists leading JWST investigations, talk to Steven Strogatz about how it may transform our understanding of the universe.


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Multimedia

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Multimedia

The Map of Mathematics

By Kevin Hartnett
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Explore our surprisingly simple, absurdly ambitious and necessarily incomplete guide to the boundless mathematical universe.


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About Quanta Magazine

Illuminating basic science and math research through public service journalism.

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Quanta Magazine is committed to in-depth, accurate journalism that serves the public interest. Each article braids the complexities of science with the malleable art of storytelling and is meticulously reported, edited and fact-checked. Launched and funded by the Simons Foundation, Quanta is editorially independent — our articles do not reflect or represent the views of the foundation.

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