From brain folds to insect architecture, L. Mahadevan explains how complex biological forms and behaviors emerge through the interplay of physical forces, environment and embodiment.
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Latest Articles
The Ecosystem Dynamics That Can Make or Break an Invasion
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By speedrunning ecosystems with microbes, researchers revealed intrinsic properties that may make a community susceptible to invasion.
Is Gravity Just Entropy Rising? Long-Shot Idea Gets Another Look.
A new argument explores how the growth of disorder could cause massive objects to move toward one another. Physicists are both interested and skeptical.
Epic Effort to Ground Physics in Math Opens Up the Secrets of Time
By mathematically proving how individual molecules create the complex motion of fluids, three mathematicians have illuminated why time can’t flow in reverse.
New Quantum Algorithm Factors Numbers With One Qubit
The catch: It would require the energy of a few medium-size stars.
First Map Made of a Solid’s Secret Quantum Geometry
Physicists recently mapped the hidden shape that underlies the quantum behaviors of a crystal, using a new method that’s expected to become ubiquitous.
The Core of Fermat’s Last Theorem Just Got Superpowered
By extending the scope of the key insight behind Fermat’s Last Theorem, four mathematicians have made great strides toward building a “grand unified theory” of math.
How Can AI Researchers Save Energy? By Going Backward.
Reversible programs run backward as easily as they run forward, saving energy in theory. After decades of research, they may soon power AI.
How Paradoxical Questions and Simple Wonder Lead to Great Science
Manu Prakash works on the world’s most urgent problems and seemingly frivolous questions at the same time. They add up to a philosophy he calls “recreational biology.”
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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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