Knot theory began as an attempt to understand the fundamental makeup of the universe. In 1867, when scientists were eagerly trying to figure out what could possibly account for all the different kinds of matter, […]
Tag: quantamagazine
Perched on a leaf in the rainforest, the tiny golden mantella frog harbors a secret. It shares that secret with the fork-tongued frog, the reed frog and myriad other frogs in the hills and forests […]
On Sunday, October 9, Judith Racusin was 35,000 feet in the air, en route to a high-energy astrophysics conference, when the biggest cosmic explosion in history took place. “I landed, looked at my phone, and […]
Wordle has fast become a modern classic played by millions. As a puzzle enthusiast, I feel as thrilled by it as an astronomer seeing a visible supernova. Only twice before have I felt and seen […]
This month, three scientists won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work proving one of the most counterintuitive yet consequential realities of the quantum world. They showed that two entangled quantum particles must be […]
How does objective reality emerge from the palette of possibilities supplied by quantum mechanics? That question — the deepest and most vexed issue posed by the theory — is still the subject of arguments a […]
More than a century after Ernest Rutherford discovered the positively charged particle at the heart of every atom, physicists are still struggling to fully understand the proton. High school physics teachers describe them as featureless […]
Harry Halpin works on internet privacy for many reasons, but perhaps the most pressing stems from an incident that occurred over a decade ago. Halpin, who was pursuing a doctorate in computer science at the […]
Fourteen years ago, the mathematicians Dusa McDuff and Felix Schlenk stumbled upon a hidden geometric garden that is only now beginning to flower. The pair were interested in a certain kind of oblong shape, one […]
When Daniel Larsen was in middle school, he started designing crossword puzzles. He had to layer the hobby on top of his other interests: chess, programming, piano, violin. He twice qualified for the Scripps National […]
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