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The (Often) Overlooked Experiment That Revealed the Quantum World

December 5, 2023

A century ago, the Stern-Gerlach experiment established the truth of quantum mechanics. Now it’s being used to probe the clash of quantum theory and gravity.

An Easy-Sounding Problem Yields Numbers Too Big for Our Universe

December 4, 2023

Researchers prove that navigating certain systems of vectors is among the most complex computational problems.

A Century Later, New Math Smooths Out General Relativity

November 30, 2023

Mathematicians prove a theorem that illuminates the geometry of universes with tiny amounts of mass.

The New Quest to Control Evolution

November 29, 2023

Modern scientists aren’t content with predicting how life evolves. They want to shape it.

Evolving Bacteria Can Evade Barriers to ‘Peak’ Fitness

November 28, 2023

Paradoxically, natural selection can sometimes seem to block organisms from evolving useful adaptations. But a new study of “fitness landscapes” and antibiotic resistance in bacteria shows that life still finds a way.

Meet Strange Metals: Where Electricity May Flow Without Electrons

November 27, 2023

For 50 years, physicists have understood current as a flow of charged particles. But a new experiment has found that in at least one strange material, this understanding falls apart.

Pierre de Fermat’s Link to a High School Student’s Prime Math Proof

November 22, 2023

How Fermat’s less famous "little theorem" got mathematicians young and old to play with prime-like Carmichael numbers.

In the Gut’s ‘Second Brain,’ Key Agents of Health Emerge

November 21, 2023

Sitting alongside the neurons in your enteric nervous system are underappreciated glial cells, which play key roles in digestion and disease that scientists are only just starting to understand.

Researchers Refute a Widespread Belief About Online Algorithms

November 20, 2023

Three computer scientists have disproved a long-standing conjecture about a fundamental problem involving imperfect information.

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