Quanta Magazine
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Illuminating math and science. Supported by @SimonsFdn. 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting.
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The LSST Camera is installed in the Simonyi Survey Telescope at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. The car-sized digital camera is the largest on Earth.
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Whether imaginary numbers are indispensable features of quantum mechanics or mere mathematical conveniences affects our understanding of reality itself. “The mathematical formulation does guide what we infer about the nature of the physical world,” says philosopher of physics Jill North.
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The idea that depression stems primarily from a lack of serotonin has lost much of its support. Scientists are rethinking the causes — and definition — of the illness. (From the archive)
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A Fields Medal–winning mathematician once called one of Marijn Heule’s proofs “the most disgusting proof ever.” But his methods go beyond what any human can do.
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What happens when you blend the language of groups with the language of geometry and linear algebra?
Soil fungi have long been considered passive infrastructure for plants, or worse, parasites of their roots. But they are in fact highly active, controlling not only their own destinies but also the fates of those around them.
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When the evolutionary physiologist Christian Damsgaard analyzed bird eyes with microsensors, he noticed something surprising: Their retinas used no oxygen. How does this essential organ thrive without this essential element?
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Most math works like this: Start with the axioms that you know, then use them to prove a theorem. A complexity theory paper flipped this formula upside down.
Your eyeballs are riveted with red blood vessels, which deliver the oxygen eyes need to function. But bird eyes, like those shown here, have no blood vessels in sight. How do they see so well without the help of oxygen?
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A zero-knowledge proof is an interactive process. That makes it strikingly different from ordinary mathematical proofs, which can be written down in a textbook.
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Inside bird eyes is a strange and mysterious structure called the pecten oculi. It looks like a pancake flipper, or maybe a radiator. Some 350 years after anatomists first described it, biologists finally figured out its purpose.
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The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will have the capability to alert scientists of minute changes in the night sky. This firehose of data is expected to transform our understanding of the cosmos, from asteroids to the death throes of exhausted stars.
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Kurt Gödel established that for any reasonable set of mathematical axioms, it’s impossible to prove that they won’t eventually lead to contradictions. This meant that mathematicians could never again be certain that their rules were self-consistent.
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The retina is one of the most energetically expensive tissues known to science. And yet, birds’ retinas manage without a key energy-saving tool: oxygen. New research explores how.
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Your mind’s eye exists somewhere on a sprawling continuum. Some people have visions so vivid that they are indiscernible from reality — and others cannot form mental images at all.
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If a vulnerability exists, but it’s impossible to prove that it exists, then there’s no way to take advantage of it. Rahul Ilango used this insight to build a new type of cryptography powered by unprovable mathematical statements.
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Chains of high-energy electron avalanches may very likely be making clouds glow, flicker, and flash with gamma rays. But are they also the elusive cause of lightning?
Our understanding of how the brain learns through endlessly changing is itself endlessly changing.
The Flammarion engraving, published in 1888, depicts an observer pushing through the horizon “where sky and the Earth touch,” according to its caption. Today, theoretical physicists peer into hypothetical universes and try to reconcile them with our own.
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All things come to an end. Even numbers. At least, that’s what the mathematician Doron Zeilberger believes. To him, the notion of infinity is “completely nonsense.”
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