Photo illustration by Lucy Reading-Ikkanda/Quanta Magazine. Image Source: Pexels
How do black holes merge and make gravitational waves? Maybe with a little help from their friends.
The ancient Greeks wondered when “irrational” numbers can be approximated by fractions. By proving the longstanding Duffin-Schaeffer conjecture, two mathematicians have provided a complete answer.
Polynomials aren’t just exercises in abstraction. They’re good at illuminating structure in surprising places.
Modeling suggests that many embryonic cells commit to a developmental fate when they become too small to divide unevenly anymore.
New measurements could upend the standard theory of the cosmos that has reigned since the discovery of dark energy 21 years ago.
Carlo Rubbia, leader of the bold collider experiment that in 1983 discovered the W and Z bosons, thinks particle physicists should now smash muons together in an innovative “Higgs factory.”
A new look at a ubiquitous phenomenon has uncovered unexpected fractal behavior that could give us clues about the early universe and the arrow of time.
Physicists have found examples of “universality” in a system of confined bubbles. The work could help researchers understand the strange behavior of singularities.
Answering these simple questions can give you an intuitive feel for the geometric properties behind the emergence of superconductivity in rotated graphene sheets.
In the late 1940s, Richard Feynman invented a visual tool for simplifying particle calculations that forever changed theoretical physics.
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