2021 in Review
Latest Articles
Mixing Is the Heartbeat of Deep Lakes. At Crater Lake, It’s Slowing Down.
The physics of mixing water layers — an interplay of wind, climate and more — makes lakes work. When it stops, impacts can ripple across an ecosystem.
New Proofs Probe Soap-Film Singularities
Mathematicians have broken through a long-standing barrier in the study of “minimizing surfaces,” which play an important role in both math and physics.
To Have Machines Make Math Proofs, Turn Them Into a Puzzle
Marijn Heule turns mathematical statements into something like Sudoku puzzles, then has computers go to work on them. His proofs have been called “disgusting,” but they go beyond what any human can do.
Physicists Take the Imaginary Numbers Out of Quantum Mechanics
Quantum mechanics has at last been formulated exclusively with real numbers, bringing a mathematical puzzle at the heart of the theory into a new era of inquiry.
How Your Brain Creates ‘Aha’ Moments and Why They Stick
A sudden flash of insight is a product of your brain. Neuroscientists track the neural activity underlying an “aha” and how it might boost memory.
What Is a Manifold?
In the mid-19th century, Bernhard Riemann conceived of a new way to think about mathematical spaces, providing the foundation for modern geometry and physics.
In a First, AI Models Analyze Language As Well As a Human Expert
If language is what makes us human, what does it mean now that large language models have gained “metalinguistic” abilities?
Carlo Rovelli’s Radical Perspective on Reality
The theoretical physicist and best-selling author finds inspiration in politics and philosophy for rethinking space and time.
Shark Data Suggests Animals Scale Like Geometric Objects
Despite their wide variety of sizes, niches and shapes, sharks scale geometrically, pointing to possible fundamental constraints on evolution.