Roughly 500 million years ago, something that would forever change the course of eukaryotic development was brewing in the genome of some lucky organism: a gene called Pax6. The gene is thought to have orchestrated […]
Category: quantamagazine
At first, topology can seem like an unusually imprecise branch of mathematics. It’s the study of squishy play-dough shapes capable of bending, stretching and compressing without limit. But topologists do have some restrictions: They cannot […]
Molecular biology has something in common with kite-flying competitions. At the latter, all eyes are on the colorful, elaborate, wildly kinetic constructions darting through the sky. Nobody looks at the humble reels or spools on […]
If you’ve ever taken a math test, you’ve probably met a grazing goat. Usually it’s tied to a fence post or the side of some barn, left there by an absent-minded farmer to graze on […]
Imagine being able to see the surface of an Earth-like planet orbiting another star, or watching a star get shredded by a black hole. Such precise observations are currently impossible. But scientists are proposing ways […]
As far as physicists have been able to determine, nature speaks two mutually unintelligible languages: one for gravity and one for everything else. Curves in the fabric of space-time tell planets and people which way […]
When Pascal Gagneux envisions malaria parasites and other pathogens interacting with the surfaces of a host’s cells, he pictures a miniature rainforest with pathogenic particles flying overhead like colorful birds. The canopy consists of branching […]
They say that in art, constraints lead to creativity. The same seems to be true of the universe. By placing limits on nature, the laws of physics squeeze out reality’s most fantastical creations. Limit light’s […]
A hundred years ago, the Japanese scientist Y. Shirai published a mysterious finding: When Shirai transplanted tumor tissue into a mouse’s body, the tissue was destroyed by its immune system. But when tumors were grafted […]
In the 1930s, the French physicist Pierre Auger placed Geiger counters along a ridge in the Alps and observed that they would sometimes spontaneously click at the same time, even when they were up to […]
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