Just as there’s no single best way to organize your bookshelf, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to storing information. Consider the simple situation where you create a new digital file. Your computer needs to rapidly find […]
Tag: quantamagazine
In 1998, astronomers discovered dark energy. The finding, which transformed our conception of the cosmos, came with a little-known consequence: It threw a wrench into the already daunting task of finding a version of string […]
We’re used to thinking of the brain as an electric organ. The rest of the body? Not so much. But it would be a mistake to dismiss your other tissues as dumb hunks of electrically […]
Nearly 200 years ago, the physicists Claude-Louis Navier and George Gabriel Stokes put the finishing touches on a set of equations that describe how fluids swirl. And for nearly 200 years, the Navier-Stokes equations have […]
Read a story about dogs, and you may remember it the next time you see one bounding through a park. That’s only possible because you have a unified concept of “dog” that isn’t tied to […]
Suppose you want to empty a box. Really, truly empty it. You remove all its visible contents, pump out any gases, and — applying some science-fiction technology — evacuate any unseeable material such as dark […]
The standard sperm-meets-egg story posits that sperm cells are hardly more than bundles of shrink-wrapped DNA with tails. Their mission is simple: Deliver a father’s genes into a mother’s egg for sexual reproduction. Just about […]
Mathematics is, at its core, an art. Like painters, musicians or writers, mathematicians create and explore new worlds. They test, and then push past, the limits of their imagination. They engage with thousands of years […]
In August, a team of mathematicians posted a paper claiming to solve a major problem in algebraic geometry — using entirely alien techniques. It instantly captivated the field, stoking excitement in some mathematicians and skepticism […]
Ask ChatGPT how to build a bomb, and it will flatly respond that it “can’t help with that.” But users have long played a cat-and-mouse game to try to trick language models into providing forbidden […]
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