Among the myriad abilities that humans possess, which ones are uniquely human? Language has been a top candidate at least since Aristotle, who wrote that humanity was “the animal that has language.” Even as large […]
Tag: quantamagazine
Sitting outside a Catholic church on the French Riviera, Carlo Rovelli jutted his head forward and backward, imitating a pigeon trotting by. Pigeons bob their heads, he told me, not only to stabilize their vision […]
It’s a universal fact that as any 3D object, from a Platonic sphere to a cell to an elephant, grows outward in all directions, its total surface area will increase more slowly than the space […]
Imagine you’re holding two equal-size dice. Is it possible to bore a tunnel through one die that’s big enough for the other to slide through? Perhaps your instinct is to say “Surely not!” If so, […]
Imagine a town with two widget merchants. Customers prefer cheaper widgets, so the merchants must compete to set the lowest price. Unhappy with their meager profits, they meet one night in a smoke-filled tavern to […]
In May 2014, NASA announced at a press conference that a portion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appeared to have reached a point of irreversible retreat. Glaciers flowing toward the sea at the periphery […]
The pillow is cold against your cheek. Your upstairs neighbor creaks across the ceiling. You close your eyes; shadows and light dance across your vision. A cat sniffs at a piece of cheese. Dots fall […]
The best perk of Alberto Maspero’s job, he says, is the view from his window. Situated on a hill above the ancient port city of Trieste, Italy, his office at the International School for Advanced […]
In 1939, upon arriving late to his statistics course at the University of California, Berkeley, George Dantzig — a first-year graduate student — copied two problems off the blackboard, thinking they were a homework assignment. […]
Sip a glass of wine, and you will notice liquid continuously weeping down the wetted side of the glass. In 1855, James Thomson, brother of Lord Kelvin, explained in the Philosophical Magazine that these wine […]
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