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Quanta Magazine | Science and Math News

Legos coming together to make a person.

Samuel Velasco/Quanta Magazine

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origins of life

A New Idea for How to Assemble Life

By Philip Ball
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If we want to understand complex constructions, such as ourselves, assembly theory says we must account for the entire history of how such entities came to be.

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algorithms

The Most Important Machine That Was Never Built

By Sheon Han
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When he invented Turing machines in 1936, Alan Turing also invented modern computing.

A visual argument explaining why the Ramsey number of three is six.
graph theory

A Very Big Small Leap Forward in Graph Theory

By Leila Sloman
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Four mathematicians have found a new upper limit to the “Ramsey number,” a crucial property describing unavoidable structure in graphs.

smell

How a Human Smell Receptor Works Is Finally Revealed

By Wynne Parry
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After decades of frustration, researchers have determined how an airborne scent molecule links to a human smell receptor.

A complex machine produces prime numbers onto a conveyor belt that winds backwards into infinity.
number theory

Why Mathematicians Re-Prove What They Already Know

By Anna Kramer
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It’s been known for thousands of years that the primes go on forever, but new proofs give fresh insights into how theorems depend on one another.

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The Joy of Why

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Is Perpetual Motion Possible at the Quantum Level?

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A new phase of matter called a “time crystal” plays with our expectations of thermodynamics. The physicist Vedika Khemani talks with Steven Strogatz about its surprising quantum behavior.


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Q&A

The Computer Scientist Peering Inside AI’s Black Boxes

By Allison Parshall
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biodiversity

How Pools of Genetic Diversity Affect a Species’ Fate

By Anna Funk
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A new, deeper understanding of how the breeding structure of species affects their genetic diversity is giving conservationists better tools for saving animals.

A video of the sun showing the eruption of a solar flare.
solar physics

Tiny Jets on the Sun Power the Colossal Solar Wind

By Theo Nicitopoulos
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A new analysis argues that ubiquitous eruptions in the sun’s corona explain the vast flow of charged particles seen streaming out through the solar system.

combinatorics

The Number 15 Describes the Secret Limit of an Infinite Grid

By Kevin Hartnett
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The “packing coloring” problem asks how many numbers are needed to fill an infinite grid so that identical numbers never get too close to one another. A new computer-assisted proof finds a surprisingly straightforward answer.

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Quanta Podcast

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What Causes Alzheimer’s? Scientists Are Rethinking the Answer.
By Yasemin Saplakoglu
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After decades in the shadow of the reigning model for Alzheimer’s disease, alternative explanations are finally getting the attention they deserve.

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an illustration of various objects (a chair, a rocket, a cell phone, etc.) as well as biological objects such as a DNA double-helix and microbe, all against a lime green background

What Is Life?

By Steven Strogatz

How Complex Wholes Emerge From Simple Parts

By John Rennie
Lisa Kaltenegger, a woman with red hair, peers through the eyepiece of an antique telescope.

A Dream of Discovering Alien Life Finds New Hope

By Joshua Sokol

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Multimedia

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red and orange rocket ship surrounded by purple planets with numbers on them
Puzzles
How Many Exoplanets Can You Visit in Quanta’s New Math Game?
By Thomas Lin
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Explore a universe of numbers and arithmetic in our new interactive math game, Hyperjumps!


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About Quanta Magazine

Illuminating basic science and math research through public service journalism.

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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.

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