In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn observed that scientists spend long periods taking small steps. They pose and solve puzzles while collectively interpreting all data within a fixed worldview […]
Tag: quantamagazine
In 2018, astronomers operating an antenna called EDGES in the Australian outback reported that radio waves of a particular frequency were significantly dimmer than other waves coming from the night sky. The finding, published in […]
In Ian Fleming’s first novel, James Bond returns from the Royale-les-Eaux casino to his hotel room and inspects it for signs of intrusion. First, he confirms that a hair carefully placed inside his writing desk […]
From the bizarre creatures in the depths of the oceans to the bacteria inside our bodies, all life on Earth consists of cells. But we have only a very rough idea of how even the […]
During a solar eclipse in 1919, Arthur Eddington observed light bending around the sun just as predicted by general relativity, Albert Einstein’s new theory of gravity. Since then, general relativity, which says that massive objects […]
In most two-player games, it is generally better to win the toss and go first. And if you are sharing a pizza with someone and want to have a larger portion, it’s usually better to […]
Today’s most successful artificial intelligence algorithms, artificial neural networks, are loosely based on the intricate webs of real neural networks in our brains. But unlike our highly efficient brains, running these algorithms on computers guzzles […]
Most complex organisms engage in a strange bit of genomic math at some point in their lives: To multiply, they subtract and then add. That is, to reproduce through the process of meiosis they create […]
Mathematicians often work together when they’re searching for insight into a hard problem. It’s a kind of freewheeling collaborative process that seems to require a uniquely human touch. But in two new results, the role […]
Billions of times each minute, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) smashes protons together, unleashing a maelstrom of energy that crystallizes into more protons, neutrons, and less familiar cousins of the nuclear particles. Some particles encounter […]
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