In the summer of 1991, Pinatubo, a volcano in the Philippines, self-destructed. The eruption started on June 12, and three days later it culminated in a tremendous explosion. By the time pyroclastic flows — incandescent […]
Tag: quantamagazine
Before he changed the way we understand lightning on Earth, Joseph Dwyer studied the weather in more cosmic settings. Using the sensors on NASA’s Wind satellite, orbiting a million miles away, he watched flares shoot […]
Living on light is a dangerous game. Not only do the sun’s rays carry ultraviolet waves that can snap DNA strands and degrade molecules, but they also vary wildly in intensity. Plants must endure and […]
Roughly 540 million years ago, toward the start of the Cambrian Period, the planet was mostly ocean, and life was both alien and vaguely familiar. Small, phallic-looking worms rummaged through ocean-floor sediments while blind swimming […]
How do mathematicians decide that something is true? They write a proof. Often they start with proofs that already exist, building on or drawing connections between proven claims. Each of these proofs, in turn, has […]
Doron Zeilberger is a mathematician who believes that all things come to an end. That just as we are limited beings, so too does nature have boundaries — and therefore so do numbers. Look out […]
Ice comes in more forms than what you’ll find in a freezer or a glacier. Since 1900, scientists have observed more than 20 phases of ice, many of them shaped under extreme conditions. The growing […]
Every experience we have changes our brain, the way a ceramicist reshapes a slab of clay. Every corner we turn, every conversation we have, every shudder we feel causes cascading effects: Chemicals are released, electricity […]
From the tangle in your computer cord to the mess your cat made of your knitting basket, knots are everywhere in daily life. They also pervade science, showing up in loops of DNA, intertwined polymer […]
You’re the earliest known life form. There’s no food around right now. It would be great to go somewhere else. But you’re stuck. Really stuck. At your size (a couple of microns), water feels like […]
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