Quanta Magazine | Science and Math News

An illustration shows a human smelling a bouquet of flowers with many different molecules. There are smelly objects around it, like a perfume bottle, an orange and cheese.

Michael Waraksa for Quanta Magazine

Latest Articles

How Smell Guides Our Inner World

A better understanding of human smell is emerging as scientists interrogate its fundamental elements: the odor molecules that enter your nose and the individual neurons that translate them into perception in your brain.

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Physicists Start To Pin Down How Stars Forge Heavy Atoms

The precursors of heavy elements might arise in the plasma underbellies of swollen stars or in smoldering stellar corpses. They definitely exist in East Lansing, Michigan.

Researchers Uncover Hidden Ingredients Behind AI Creativity

Image generators are designed to mimic their training data, so where does their apparent creativity come from? A recent study suggests that it’s an inevitable by-product of their architecture.

When Did Nature Burst Into Vivid Color?

Scientists reconstructed 500 million years of evolutionary history to reveal which came first: colorful signals or the color vision needed to see them.

A New Pyramid-Like Shape Always Lands the Same Side Up

A tetrahedron is the simplest Platonic solid. Mathematicians have now made one that’s stable only on one side, confirming a decades-old conjecture.

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Why Some People Don’t ‘See’ Mental Imagery: Aphantasia

Christopher W. Young/Quanta Magazine

Special Features

The Joy of Why


A diagram of an eye
00:00 / 34:14

Maria Chudnovsky reflects on her journey in graph theory, her groundbreaking solution to the long-standing perfect graph problem, and the unexpected ways this abstract field intersects with everyday life.

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The Thought Experiments That Fray the Fabric of Space-Time

These three imagined scenarios lead many physicists to doubt that space-time is fundamental.

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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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