Given a collection of points in space, can you find a certain type of curve that passes through all of them? This question — a version of what’s called the interpolation problem — has interested […]
Tag: quantamagazine
Predicting complex systems like the weather is famously difficult. But at least the weather’s governing equations don’t change from one day to the next. In contrast, certain complex systems can undergo “tipping point” transitions, suddenly […]
In the summer of 2021, atop the coastal cliffs of Santa Barbara, California, Chris Keeley, then an undergraduate at the nearby university, crouched to pull a bundle of metal and rubber out of his backpack. […]
When Richard Rusczyk became interested in math competitions as a middle schooler in the early 1980s, the contest problems looked nothing like the ones in his math classes. He couldn’t find any book to guide […]
Understanding how the brain organizes and accesses spatial information — where we are, what’s around the corner, how to get there — remains an exquisite challenge. The process involves recalling an entire network of memories […]
When photons hurtle toward a black hole, most are sucked into its depths, never to return, or gently deflected away. A rare few, however, skirt the hole, making a series of abrupt U-turns. Some of […]
You’re on the vacation of a lifetime in Kenya, traversing the savanna on safari, with the tour guide pointing out elephants to your right and lions to your left. Years later, you walk into a […]
If someone tells you a fact you already know, they’ve essentially told you nothing at all. Whereas if they impart a secret, it’s fair to say something has really been communicated. This distinction is at […]
Astronomers have revealed the first photograph of an exoplanet taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The image shows the bright blob of a world seven times heavier than Jupiter that orbits a star […]
Isaac Newton was not known for his generosity of spirit, and his disdain for his rivals was legendary. But in one letter to his competitor Gottfried Leibniz, now known as the Epistola Posterior, Newton comes […]
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