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Social Distancing From the Stars
Professional astronomers may not point their telescopes by hand anymore, but COVID-19 has still closed observatories and impeded research.
How Physics Found a Geometric Structure for Math to Play With
Symplectic geometry is a relatively new field with implications for much of modern mathematics. Here’s what it’s all about.
Mathematicians Will Never Stop Proving the Prime Number Theorem
Why do mathematicians enjoy proving the same results in different ways?
How and Why Computers Roll Loaded Dice
Researchers are one step closer to injecting probability into deterministic machines.
The Cartoon Picture of Magnets That Has Transformed Science
One hundred years after it was proposed, the Ising model is used to understand everything from magnets to brains.
The Two Forms of Mathematical Beauty
Mathematicians typically appreciate either generic or exceptional beauty in their work, but one type is more useful in describing the universe.
The Computer Scientist Who Can’t Stop Telling Stories
For pioneering computer scientist Donald Knuth, good coding is synonymous with beautiful expression.
How (Relatively) Simple Symmetries Underlie Our Expanding Universe
Although Einstein’s theory of space-time seems more complicated than Newtonian physics, it greatly simplified the mathematical description of the universe.
The Hidden Heroines of Chaos
Two women programmers played a pivotal role in the birth of chaos theory. Their previously untold story illustrates the changing status of computation in science.