The biological world is awash in chemical signals. Ants lead their nest mates to food with winding trails of pheromones, plants exude aerosols to warn their neighbors of herbivores, and everything you experience as “smell” […]
Tag: quantamagazine
In the early 2000s, a young graduate student at Harvard University began to chart an exotic mathematical universe — one inhabited by shapes that defy geometric intuition. Her name was Maryam Mirzakhani, and she would […]
Physics dazzled Miles Cranmer from an early age. His grandfather, a physics professor at the University of Toronto, gave him books on the subject, and his parents took him to open houses at universities near […]
Since before she could remember, Eva Llabrés was a snorkeler. Her grandfather, a fishmonger from the Spanish island of Menorca, bought Llabrés her first mask and fins; throughout childhood, she was in the Mediterranean, spotting […]
At the beginning of time and the center of every black hole lies a point of infinite density called a singularity. To explore these enigmas, we take what we know about space, time, gravity and […]
After shuffling the cards in a standard 52-card deck, Alex Mullen, a three-time world memory champion, can memorize their order in under 20 seconds. As he flips though the cards, he takes a mental walk […]
In 2003, a German graduate student named Britta Späth encountered the McKay conjecture, one of the biggest open problems in the mathematical realm known as group theory. At first her goals were relatively modest: She […]
“Obviously” is a dangerous word, even in scenarios that seem simple. Suppose, for instance, you need to do an important computation. You get to choose between two computers that are almost identical, except that one […]
If you’ve ever moved into a new home, then you know how difficult it can be to steer bulky furniture through narrow hallways or around awkward corners. Mathematicians have been trying to solve this problem, […]
By 1928, quantum physicists seemed poised to unravel matter’s final secrets. The German researcher Walter Gordon had applied the emerging theory of quantum mechanics to the hydrogen atom, the universe’s simplest atom, and worked out […]
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