In 1993, deep underground at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, a few flashes of light inside a bus-size tank of oil kicked off a detective story that is yet to reach its conclusion. […]
Category: quantamagazine
In everyday language, the word “transcendental” connotes something that’s beyond the ordinary, something that is hidden and mysterious, with almost magical or mystical powers. In mathematics, on the other hand, the meaning of the term […]
In a burst of work, mathematicians have moved closer to understanding just how many ways there are of contorting a simple sphere so that, in the end, it still resembles itself. Much of the progress […]
The infamous twin paradox sends the astronaut Alice on a blazing-fast space voyage. When she returns to reunite with her twin, Bob, she finds that he has aged much faster than she has. It’s a […]
Hearing is so effortless for most of us that it’s often difficult to comprehend how much information the brain’s auditory system needs to process and disentangle. It has to take incoming sounds and transform them […]
Is artificial intelligence the new alchemy? That is, are the powerful algorithms that control so much of our lives — from internet searches to social media feeds — the modern equivalent of turning lead into […]
Approximately 85% of the mass in the universe is missing — we can infer its existence, we just can’t see it. Over the years, a number of different explanations for this “dark matter” have been […]
Every time a human or machine learns how to get better at a task, a trail of evidence is left behind. A sequence of physical changes — to cells in a brain or to numerical […]
Leaping, scurrying, flying and swimming through their natural habitats, animals compile a mental map of the world around them — one that they use to navigate home, find food and locate other points of vital […]
In an increasingly data-driven world, mathematical tools known as wavelets have become an indispensable way to analyze and understand information. Many researchers receive their data in the form of continuous signals, meaning an unbroken stream […]
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