Abstractions blog

A group of MIT undergraduates is searching for tetrahedra that tile space, the latest effort in a millennia-long inquiry. They’ve already made a new discovery.

Unusual proteins that can quickly fold into different shapes provide cells with a novel regulatory mechanism.

Small black holes were nowhere to be found, leading astronomers to wonder if they didn’t exist at all. Now a series of findings, including a “unicorn” black hole, has raised hopes of solving the decade-long mystery.

Since they can’t prod actual universes as they inflate and bump into each other in the hypothetical multiverse, physicists are studying digital and physical analogs of the process.

Three-dimensional supernova simulations have solved the mystery of why they explode at all.

In grafted plants, shrunken chloroplasts can jump between species by slipping through unexpected gateways in cell walls.

A glass sponge found deep in the Pacific shows a remarkable ability to withstand compression and bending, on top of the sponge’s other unusual properties.

For decades, astronomers debated whether a particular smudge was close-by and small, or distant and huge. A new X-ray map supports the massive option.

Two teams found different ways for quantum computers to process nonlinear systems by first disguising them as linear ones.