Lianne Milton for Quanta Magazine
The Brazilian mathematician Carolina Araujo, who calls herself “a bit of an anarchist,” is organizing meetings and building a support network to study and solve the problems women face in mathematics.
An analysis of lunar craters has found that we’ve been living in a relatively violent period in cosmic history.
A science fiction novelist and an internet commenter made breakthroughs on a longstanding problem about the number of ways you can arrange a set of items. What did they discover?
Emerging evidence suggests that the brain encodes abstract knowledge in the same way that it represents positions in space, which hints at a more universal theory of cognition.
Neural networks are famously incomprehensible, so Been Kim is developing a “translator for humans.”
Astronomers couldn’t find enough satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. Now they have the opposite problem.
Dark matter may occasionally interact with minerals in the earth, leaving telltale tracks that physicists hope to decipher.
The same codes needed to thwart errors in quantum computers may also give the fabric of space-time its intrinsic robustness.
Celebrate a year’s worth of scientific and mathematical insights by solving this brain-teasing cryptic crossword from our puzzle columnist.
Throughout nature, throngs of relatively simple elements can self-organize into behaviors that seem unexpectedly complex. Scientists are beginning to understand why and how these phenomena emerge without a central organizing entity.
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.
