origins of life
First Support for a Physics Theory of Life
Take chemistry, add energy, get life. The first tests of Jeremy England’s provocative origin-of-life hypothesis are in, and they appear to show how order can arise from nothing.
Thinking Places
Eva Silverstein’s Spirals and Strings
Daily bike rides, serendipitous interactions and long periods of solo thinking inspire this string cosmologist.
Abstractions blog
Marjorie Rice’s Secret Pentagons
A California housewife who in the 1970s discovered four new types of tessellating pentagons is dead at 94.
geometry
Pentagon Tiling Proof Solves Century-Old Math Problem
A French mathematician has completed the classification of all convex pentagons, and therefore all convex polygons, that tile the plane.
Abstractions blog
Planet Nine Is Put on Trial in Absentia
Breathless media coverage notwithstanding, the cases for and against a hypothetical Planet Nine in the outskirts of the solar system remain inconclusive.
Thinking Places
Juan Maldacena, Pondering Quantum Gravity by the Pond
One of the world’s preeminent theoretical physicists seeks a quiet place to think.
quantum gravity
Where Gravity Is Weak and Naked Singularities Are Verboten
Recent calculations tie together two conjectures about gravity, potentially revealing new truths about its elusive quantum nature.
Thinking Places
Rainer Weiss, Remembering the Little Room in the Plywood Palace
The physicist who designed the LIGO experiment that detected gravitational waves still holes up in a small basement lab surrounded by electronics and optical instruments.
consciousness
A Theory of Reality as More Than the Sum of Its Parts
New math shows how, contrary to conventional scientific wisdom, conscious beings and other macroscopic entities might have greater influence over the future than do the sum of their microscopic components.