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How Paradoxical Questions and Simple Wonder Lead to Great Science
...organisms for their own, glorious sake. He then figures out the physics and math that govern the often extraordinary behaviors of these single-celled critters. Not many researchers pursue both applied...
Surprising Limits Discovered in Quest for Optimal Solutions
...to spend limited free time before bed. These scenarios and many others can be represented as a mathematical optimization problem. Making the best decisions is a matter of finding their...
Three Hundred Years Later, a Tool from Isaac Newton Gets an Update
A simple, widely used mathematical technique can finally be applied to boundlessly complex problems. Every day, researchers search for optimal solutions. They might want to figure out where to build...
Scientists Parse Ocean’s Dynamic Role in Climate Change
The Ocean’s Dynamic Role in Climate Change New data collected by mathematicians and oceanographers in the frigid waters of the Southern Ocean could dramatically improve climate models. The research vessel...
Prime Gap Grows After Decades-Long Lull
...be. Paul Erdős, left, and Terence Tao discussing math in 1985. This past August, Tao and four other mathematicians proved an old Erdős conjecture, marking the first major advance in...
The Neuroscience Behind Bad Decisions
...known as divisive normalization, spells out the math behind this recalibration process. It proposes that neurons can send more efficient messages if they encode in their sequence of spikes only...
How to Use a Sphere to Talk to Mars
To avoid garbled messages, mathematicians might translate them into geometric form. It’s hard to send a message from Mars. When the Curiosity rover, currently active on the surface of the...
The New Familiar Quanta
...bring you the very best coverage of mathematics and basic science news. Over the years, thanks to you, our audience has multiplied. We have expanded into new forms of journalism...
Why Quantum Computers Might Not Break Cryptography
...is interesting to see that the conventional wisdom is wrong.” Math is hard. Indeed, much of the modern infrastructure for secure communication depends heavily on the difficulty of elementary mathematics...