In October 2015, a young mathematician named Clemens Sämann was flying home to Austria from a conference in Turin, Italy, when he had a chance encounter. He found himself seated beside Michael Kunzinger, another conference […]
Category: quantamagazine
When the sun shines on your skin, what does it hit? When it causes a burn, what went wrong? Underneath that pain is your cells’ emergency response to DNA damage. When a hazard, such as […]
On June 23, 2025, Tony Tyson joined a presentation in Washington, D.C., to unveil an image almost 30 years in the making: 10 million galaxies poised on an inky black backdrop. To appreciate each galaxy […]
Climate models have changed the way we view the world. While effective, these models are imperfect, and scientists are constantly looking at ways to improve their accuracy and predictability. MIT professor Elfatih Eltahir has spent […]
Randomness is a source of power. From the coin toss that decides which team gets the ball to the random keys that secure online interactions, randomness lets us make choices that are fair and impossible […]
In math, the search for optimal patterns never ends. The sphere-packing problem — which asks how to cram balls into a (high-dimensional) box as efficiently as possible — is no exception. It has enticed mathematicians […]
When Thomas Hummel gets a whiff of an unripe, green tomato, he finds himself in his childhood home in Bavaria. Under the tilted ceilings of the bedroom that he shared with his two older brothers, […]
The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) may not glitter quite like the night sky, plunked as it is between Michigan State University’s chemistry department and the performing arts center. Inside, though, the lab is […]
We were once promised self-driving cars and robot maids. Instead, we’ve seen the rise of artificial intelligence systems that can beat us in chess, analyze huge reams of text and compose sonnets. This has been […]
The natural world is awash with color, and many of these vibrant hues are meant to be seen. Apples blush red to coax animals to spread their seeds, lavender blooms are violet to lure in […]
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