Kristina Armitage/Quanta Magazine
Two teams have made photons act as if time were simultaneously flowing in two directions. The experiments demonstrate a way to potentially boost the performance of quantum devices.
Depression has often been blamed on low levels of serotonin in the brain. That answer is insufficient, but alternatives are coming into view and changing our understanding of the disease.
In Shang-Hua Teng’s work, theoretical and practical questions have long been intertwined. Now he’s turning his focus to the impractical.
In three-dimensional space, the surface of a black hole must be a sphere. But a new result shows that in higher dimensions, an infinite number of configurations are possible.
Whether you’re passing secret notes in class or downloading images from a space probe, Reed-Solomon codes offer an ingenious way to embed information and correct for errors.
Reports that the James Webb Space Telescope killed the reigning cosmological model turn out to have been exaggerated. But astronomers still have much to learn from distant galaxies glimpsed by Webb.
Researchers can now find the shortest route through a network nearly as fast as theoretically possible, even when some steps can cancel out others.
Tiny genetic sequences in a mother’s bacteria seem to hop into the infant’s bacteria, perhaps ensuring a healthy microbiome later in life.
Robots can surpass the limitations on how high and far animals can jump, but their success only underscores nature’s ingenuity in making the most of what’s available.
Wordle is a word game. But you can use math to optimize your chances of winning (without cheating).
Artificial intelligence has bested humans at problem-solving challenges like chess and Go. Is mathematics research next? Steven Strogatz speaks with mathematician Kevin Buzzard to learn about the effort to translate math into language that computers understand.
Illuminating basic science and math research through public service journalism.
More about usQuanta 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.
