Mark Belan/Quanta Magazine
Physicists recently mapped the hidden shape that underlies the quantum behaviors of a crystal, using a new method that’s expected to become ubiquitous.
Studies of neural metabolism reveal our brain’s effort to keep us alive and the evolutionary constraints that sculpted our most complex organ.
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.
Reversible programs run backward as easily as they run forward, saving energy in theory. After decades of research, they may soon power AI.
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.”
A new proof illuminates the hidden patterns that emerge when addition becomes impossible.
One computer scientist’s “stunning” proof is the first progress in 50 years on one of the most famous questions in computer science.
Slight changes in the number, shape, efficiency and interconnectedness of organelles in the cells of flight muscles provide extra energy for birds’ continent-spanning feats.
Christopher W. Young/Quanta Magazine
Promise and controversy continues to surround string theory as a potential unified theory of everything. In the latest episode of The Joy of Why, Cumrun Vafa discusses his progress in trying to find good, testable models hidden among the ‘swampland’ of impossible universes.
These three imagined scenarios lead many physicists to doubt that space-time is fundamental.
Illuminating basic science and math research through public service journalism.
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