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Quanta Magazine | Science and Math News

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quantum physics

How Quantum Physicists ‘Flipped Time’ (and How They Didn’t)

By Charlie Wood
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Two teams have made photons act as if time were simultaneously flowing in two directions. The experiments demonstrate a way to potentially boost the performance of quantum devices.

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A sad woman stands under an umbrella that is decorated with images of brains, molecules and DNA. Rain falls on her under the umbrella but the day is otherwise clear.
neuroscience

The Cause of Depression Is Probably Not What You Think

By Joanna Thompson
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Depression has often been blamed on low levels of serotonin in the brain. That answer is insufficient, but alternatives are coming into view and changing our understanding of the disease.

Shang-Hua Teng in a blazer on a street
Q&A

The Computer Scientist Who Finds Life Lessons in Games

By Ben Brubaker
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In Shang-Hua Teng’s work, theoretical and practical questions have long been intertwined. Now he’s turning his focus to the impractical.

Fanciful illustration of galaxies with various geometric shapes at their centers.
mathematical physics

Mathematicians Find an Infinity of Possible Black Hole Shapes

By Steve Nadis
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In three-dimensional space, the surface of a black hole must be a sphere. But a new result shows that in higher dimensions, an infinite number of configurations are possible.

cartoon illustration of a female teacher surrounded by students throwing paper airplanes covered in equations against a bright orange background
Quantized Academy

The Basic Algebra Behind Secret Codes and Space Communication

By Patrick Honner
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Whether you’re passing secret notes in class or downloading images from a space probe, Reed-Solomon codes offer an ingenious way to embed information and correct for errors.

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An illustration of an airplane with its contrails coming out in front of it.

Quantum Mischief Rewrites the Laws of Cause and Effect

By Natalie Wolchover

Does Time Really Flow? New Clues Come From a Century-Old Approach to Math.

By Natalie Wolchover
Illustration of various kinds of clocks floating against a pink background.

The New Thermodynamic Understanding of Clocks

By Natalie Wolchover

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illustration of four six-sided green dice covered in different numbers, with orange arrows connecting some of the dice
combinatorics

Mathematicians Roll Dice and Get Rock-Paper-Scissors

By Erica Klarreich
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A panoramic image of the cosmos shows hundreds of galaxies, including four blobs of light that are magnified and labeled with their corresponding redshifts.
astrophysics

Standard Model of Cosmology Survives a Telescope’s Findings

By Rebecca Boyle
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Reports that the James Webb Space Telescope killed the reigning cosmological model turn out to have been exaggerated. But astronomers still have much to learn from distant galaxies glimpsed by Webb.

graph theory

Finally, a Fast Algorithm for Shortest Paths on Negative Graphs

By Ben Brubaker
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Researchers can now find the shortest route through a network nearly as fast as theoretically possible, even when some steps can cancel out others.

Illustration of a mother holding an infant, with strands of DNA running between the bacteria inside them.
microbiome

Mobile Genes From the Mother Shape the Baby’s Microbiome

By Yasemin Saplakoglu
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Tiny genetic sequences in a mother’s bacteria seem to hop into the infant’s bacteria, perhaps ensuring a healthy microbiome later in life.

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Record-Breaking Robot Highlights How Animals Excel at Jumping
By Yasemin Saplakoglu
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Robots can surpass the limitations on how high and far animals can jump, but their success only underscores nature’s ingenuity in making the most of what’s available.

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Wordle is a word game. But you can use math to optimize your chances of winning (without cheating).


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Computers doing mathematics.

Can Computers Be Mathematicians?

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Artificial intelligence has bested humans at problem-solving challenges like chess and Go. Is mathematics research next? Steven Strogatz speaks with mathematician Kevin Buzzard to learn about the effort to translate math into language that computers understand.


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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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