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explainers

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An orange ball decomposing into points and rematerializing as two balls, each the same size as the first.
explainers

Banach-Tarski and the Paradox of Infinite Cloning

By Max G. Levy
August 26, 2021
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One of the strangest results in mathematics explains how it’s possible to turn one sphere into two identical copies, simply by rearranging its pieces.

A dark red planetlike object.
explainers

Neither Star nor Planet: A Strange Brown Dwarf Puzzles Astronomers

By Jonathan O'Callaghan
August 4, 2021
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Brown dwarfs such as “The Accident” are illuminating the murky borderlands that separate planets from stars.

Animated illustration showing multiple permutations of colorful letters
group theory

Galois Groups and the Symmetries of Polynomials

By Allison Whitten
August 3, 2021
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By focusing on relationships between solutions to polynomial equations, rather than the exact solutions themselves, Évariste Galois changed the course of modern mathematics.

A complicated arrangement of orange and purple bands against a black background.
condensed matter physics

The ‘Weirdest’ Matter, Made of Partial Particles, Defies Description

By Thomas Lewton
July 26, 2021
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Theorists are in a frenzy over “fractons,” bizarre, but potentially useful, hypothetical particles that can only move in combination with one another.

An illustration of far-apart particles connected by an aura.
explainers

How Bell’s Theorem Proved ‘Spooky Action at a Distance’ Is Real

By Ben Brubaker
July 20, 2021
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The root of today’s quantum revolution was John Stewart Bell’s 1964 theorem showing that quantum mechanics really permits instantaneous connections between far-apart locations.

Quantized Columns

How ‘Long COVID’ Keeps Us Sick

By Tara C. Smith
July 1, 2021
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Other diseases with long-term symptoms can help us understand how COVID can affect us long after the virus itself is gone.

A large telescope with many segmented hexagonal mirrors.
astrophysics

Brighter Than a Billion Billion Suns: Gamma-Ray Bursts Continue to Surprise

By Jonathan O'Callaghan
June 30, 2021
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These ultrabright flashes have recently been tracked for days, upending ideas about the cataclysms that create them.

Photo of the blue-winged leafbird of Southeast Asia.
explainers

How Animals Color Themselves With Nanoscale Structures

By Viviane Callier
June 16, 2021
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Animals sculpt the optical properties of their tissues at the nanoscale to give themselves “structural colors.” New work is piecing together how they do it.

topology

How Mathematicians Use Homology to Make Sense of Topology

By Kelsey Houston-Edwards
May 11, 2021
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Originally devised as a rigorous means of counting holes, homology provides a scaffolding for mathematical ideas, allowing for a new way to analyze the shapes within data.


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