In mathematics, ubiquitous objects called groups display nearly magical powers. Though they’re defined by just a few rules, groups help illuminate an astonishing range of mysteries. They can tell you which polynomial equations are solvable, […]
Tag: quantamagazine
When it comes to hard problems, computer scientists seem to be stuck. Consider, for example, the notorious problem of finding the shortest round-trip route that passes through every city on a map exactly once. All […]
Ninety million times a year, when protons crash together at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), they produce, in their wreckage, a top quark and an anti-top quark, the heaviest known elementary particles. In the trillionth […]
Life’s fundamental structure is the cell, and so the main things that a cell does — processing biomolecules, growing, replicating its genetic material and producing a new body — are considered hallmarks of life. But […]
All of modern mathematics is built on the foundation of set theory, the study of how to organize abstract collections of objects. But in general, research mathematicians don’t need to think about it when they’re […]
Tinkering at their desks with the mathematics of quantum space and time, physicists have discovered a puzzling conundrum. The arcane rules of quantum theory and gravity let them imagine many different kinds of universes in […]
The force we experience most intimately remains the most mysterious. Physicists understand how vast migrations of particles called photons light up our homes, and how swarms of “gluon” particles hold together the cores of our […]
On a radiant July afternoon, a pair of scientists hung their heads off the side of a boat and peered into the brilliant blue water of a lake known for its clarity. They were watching […]
In the mid-19th century, the Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau — who had been designing and conducting scientific experiments since he was a child — submerged loops of wire in a soapy solution and studied the […]
The mathematical conundrums that Marijn Heule has helped crack in the last decade sound like code names lifted from a sci-fi spy novel: the empty hexagon. Schur Number 5. Keller’s conjecture, dimension seven. In reality, […]
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