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The Sun Is Stranger Than Astrophysicists Imagined
The sun radiates far more high-frequency light than expected, raising questions about unknown features of the sun’s magnetic field and the possibility of even more exotic physics. A decade’s worth...
How Is Flocking Like Computing?
...exhibited. When we first measured these properties, it seemed like the individuals were defying the laws of physics. The information was percolating so quickly. And in the, sort of, early...
Growing Anomalies at the Large Hadron Collider Raise Hopes
...physics — the reigning set of equations describing the subatomic world. Taken alone, each oddity looks like a statistical fluctuation, and they may all evaporate with additional data, as has...
The Hidden World of Electrostatic Ecology
...to his background in physics. The marriage of these worlds drives his curiosity: How does physics mold animal behavior? He pivoted to sensory ecology for graduate school and joined Robert’s...
Will Better Superconductors Transform the World?
...would win Kamerlingh Onnes the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physics. [Theme ends] But more importantly, it marked the start of an unresolved quest for material that maintains perfect conductivity at...
![Colorful illustration in which a sphere divided into four quadrants is surrounded by spheres divided into halves and thirds.]](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/TETRAQUARK_520x292.jpg)
‘Impossible’ Particle Discovery Adds Key Piece to the Strong Force Puzzle
...meeting of Syracuse University’s quark physics group, Ivan Polyakov announced that he had uncovered the fingerprints of a semi-mythical particle. “We said, ‘This is impossible. What mistake are you making?’”...
Did the Chicken Come First or Is It Turtles All the Way Down?
The apparent paradox of the chicken and the egg smells like “turtles all the way down.” This puzzle shows how biology and physics can overcome infinite regress. When you consider...
A New Map of All the Particles and Forces
...interactions. Together, the equations formed a succinct theory now known as the Standard Model of particle physics. The Standard Model is missing a few puzzle pieces (conspicuously absent are the...
Scant Evidence of Power Laws Found in Real-World Networks
...that earned Kenneth Wilson the 1982 Nobel Prize in physics. Soon after, power laws formed the core of two other paradigms that swept across the statistical physics world: fractals, and...