Peter Diamond for Quanta Magazine
Maintaining perfect stability through negative feedback is a basic element of electrical circuitry, but it’s been a mystery how cells could do it — until now.
A giant star’s death throes may offer the first evidence of a pair-instability supernova, and a glimpse of the first stars in the universe.
Clues from fish diversity suggest that interbreeding between species could be a major mechanism of fast speciation.
There are many different ways to think about probability. Quantum mechanics embodies them all.
Since the 1970s, physicists have described black holes using borrowed versions of the laws of thermodynamics. But are black holes really thermodynamic systems? Craig Callender worries that the analogy has been stretched too far.
Genetically identical bacteria should all be the same, but in fact, the cells are stubbornly varied individuals.
In the “underground economy” for soil nutrients, fungi strike hard bargains and punish plants that won’t meet their price.
Iyad Rahwan’s radical idea: The best way to understand algorithms is to observe their behavior in the wild.
Through exacting geometric calculations, Philip Gibbs has found the smallest known cover for any possible shape.
Does objective, perfect randomness exist, or is randomness merely a product of our ignorance?
In the late 1940s, Richard Feynman invented a visual tool for simplifying particle calculations that forever changed theoretical physics.
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.
