Science and Math News | Quanta Magazine
WEBIlluminating basic science and math research through public service journalism. Quanta Magazine is committed to in-depth, accurate journalism that serves the public interest. Each article braids the complexities of science with the malleable art of storytelling and is meticulously reported, edited and fact-checked.
How Earth’s Climate Changes Naturally (and Why Things Are …
WEBJul 21, 2020 · Earth’s climate has fluctuated through deep time, pushed by these 10 different causes. Here’s how each compares with modern climate change. Orbital wobbles, plate tectonics, evolutionary changes and other factors have sent the planet in and out of ice ages. Pablo A. Cumillaf. Earth has been a snowball and a …
A New Map of All the Particles and Forces | Quanta Magazine
WEBOct 22, 2020 · This approach doesn’t offer insight into the relationships between the particles. The force-carrying particles (namely the photon, which conveys the electromagnetic force; the W and Z bosons, which convey the weak force; and the gluons, which convey the strong force) are put on the same footing as the matter particles those forces act between — quarks, electrons and their kin.
Emily Singer - Quanta Magazine
WEBSep 22, 2016 · Emily Singer is a former senior biology writer and contributing editor at Quanta Magazine.Previously, she was the news editor for SFARI.org and the biomedical editor for Technology Review.She has written for Nature, New Scientist, the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe, and has a master’s in neuroscience from the University of California, San Diego.
Why Are Plants Green? To Reduce the Noise in Photosynthesis.
WEBJul 30, 2020 · Plants ignore the most energy-rich part of sunlight because stability matters more than efficiency, according to a new model of photosynthesis. Land plants are green because their photosynthetic pigments reflect green light, even though those wavelengths hold the most energy. Scientists finally understand why. …
How Gödel’s Proof Works - Quanta Magazine
WEBJul 14, 2020 · So the only prime factorization of 243,000,000 is 2 6 × 3 5 × 5 6, meaning there’s only one possible way to decode the Gödel number: the formula 0 = 0. Gödel then went one step further. A mathematical proof consists of a sequence of formulas. So Gödel gave every sequence of formulas a unique Gödel number too.
Mathematician Proves Huge Result on ‘Dangerous’ Problem
WEBDec 11, 2019 · Lothar Collatz likely posed the eponymous conjecture in the 1930s. The problem sounds like a party trick. Pick a number, any number. If it’s odd, multiply it by 3 and add 1. If it’s even, divide it by 2. Now you have a new number. Apply the same rules to the new number. The conjecture is about what happens as you keep repeating the process.
The Mystery at the Heart of Physics That Only Math Can Solve
WEBJun 10, 2021 · The accelerating effort to understand the mathematics of quantum field theory will have profound consequences for both math and physics. Olena Shmahalo/Quanta Magazine. Over the past century, quantum field theory has proved to be the single most sweeping and successful physical theory ever invented. It is an umbrella term that encompasses many ...
Quantum Tunnels Show How Particles Can Break the Speed of Light
WEBOct 20, 2020 · The trouble was that the answer didn’t make sense. The first tentative calculation of tunneling time appeared in print in 1932. Even earlier stabs might have been made in private, but “when you get an answer you can’t make sense of, you don’t publish it,” noted Aephraim Steinberg, a physicist at the University of Toronto.. It wasn’t until 1962 that a semiconductor engineer at Texas ...
Topology 101: The Hole Truth | Quanta Magazine
WEBJan 26, 2021 · For instance, in 1813 the Swiss mathematician Simon Lhuilier recognized that if we punch a hole in a polyhedron to make it more donut-shaped, changing its topology, then V – E + F = 0. Samuel Velasco/Quanta Magazine. Interestingly, while Euler and Lhuilier imagined their polyhedra as solid, Euler’s formula is …