Olena Shmahalo/Quanta Magazine. Globule courtesy Erez Lieberman Aiden.
Inside the cell’s nucleus, the double helix folds up in myriad loops and twists. The quest to unravel this structure is revealing the subtle genetic orchestration of all life on Earth.
In Fake Universes, Evidence for String Theory
Researchers are demonstrating that, in certain contexts, string theory is the only consistent theory of quantum gravity. Might this make it true?
Game Theory Calls Cooperation Into Question
A recent solution to the prisoner’s dilemma, a classic game theory scenario, has created new puzzles in evolutionary biology.
Breakthrough DNA Editor Borne of Bacteria
Interest in a powerful DNA editing tool called CRISPR has revealed that bacteria are far more sophisticated than anyone imagined.
No definitive evidence for cosmic inflation is found, but support remains strong for the theory even as critics highlight its shortcomings as an explanation for how and why the universe began.
Disease is the result of failure somewhere along the line in a complex dance of biological components. Now statistical physicists are using enormous databases of medical records to study connections between illnesses.
Every two-dimensional surface can be tiled over by a mosaic of triangles. But higher-dimensional spaces can’t always be “triangulated” in this way.
A Proof That Some Spaces Can’t Be Cut
Mathematicians have solved the century-old triangulation conjecture, a major problem in topology that asks whether all spaces can be subdivided into smaller units.
- In Fake Universes, Evidence for String Theory 29,469 views
- Game Theory Calls Cooperation Into Question 14,713 views
- Breakthrough DNA Editor Borne of Bacteria 11,977 views
- A New Physics Theory of Life 10,810 views
- Biologists Home in on Turing Patterns 8,608 views
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