Quanta Magazine

What Crystals Older Than the Sun Reveal About the Start of the Solar System | Quanta Magazine Microscopic crystals extracted from meteorites could help settle a debate about the birth of our patch of the Milky Way.

In 1969, a fireball appeared over Mexico. The Allende meteorite spread its debris over more than 500 square kilometers. Its chemical contents surprised scientists: It seemed to suggest that a nearby supernova triggered the formation of our solar system.

New Strides Made on Deceptively Simple ‘Lonely Runner’ Problem | Quanta Magazine A straightforward conjecture about runners moving around a track turns out to be equivalent to many complex mathematical questions. Three new proofs mark the first significant progress on the problem ...

As runners move around a track, are they bound to end up “lonely”? Three new proofs suggest the answer is yes — the first significant progress on the problem in decades.
www.quantamagazine.org/new-strides-...

Can the Most Abstract Math Make the World a Better Place? | Quanta Magazine Columnist Natalie Wolchover explores whether applied category theory can be “green” math.

How can the most abstract mathematics help us make sense of the messiest corners of our reality?

“No one shall expel us from the paradise that Cantor has created for us,” said the great mathematician David Hilbert about Georg Cantor’s proof that infinity comes in many sizes. Explore Cantor’s paradise in this visual explainer: www.quantamagazine.org/how-can-infi...

What Crystals Older Than the Sun Reveal About the Start of the Solar System | Quanta Magazine Microscopic crystals extracted from meteorites could help settle a debate about the birth of our patch of the Milky Way.

Usually locked in a safe on cosmochemist Nan Liu’s desk is a shard of meteorite flecked with material older than the sun. By studying its chemical contents, she’s gleaning insight into how our solar system came to be.

Since she was in graduate school, Laura Monk has been developing mathematical theories that Maryam Mirzakhani didn’t have a chance to finish before her death. Monk feels she’s gotten to know the mathematician through her proofs. www.quantamagazine.org/years-after-...

Can the Most Abstract Math Make the World a Better Place? | Quanta Magazine Columnist Natalie Wolchover explores whether applied category theory can be “green” math.

Qualia essays go where curiosity leads. This week, join @nattyover.bsky.social on her quest to understand whether a burgeoning, abstract mathematical field can help the planet. www.quantamagazine.org/can-the-most...

What Crystals Older Than the Sun Reveal About the Start of the Solar System | Quanta Magazine Microscopic crystals extracted from meteorites could help settle a debate about the birth of our patch of the Milky Way.

New evidence suggests our sun may have formed around a huge, luminous type of star called a Wolf-Rayet star. The bubble that surrounds such a star, like the Dolphin Head Nebula shown here, contains enough material to build a solar system like our own.

How We Came To Know Earth | Quanta Magazine Climate science is the most significant scientific collaboration in history. This series from Quanta Magazine guides you through basic climate science — from quantum effects to ancient hothouses, from...

Explore our series, “How We Came To Know Earth”
www.quantamagazine.org/how-we-came-...

We’re honored to be nominated for two awards from the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) , for General Excellence in the Literature, Science, and Politics category and Best News and Information Design for our special issue on climate. asme.memberclicks.net/national-mag...

Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex | Quanta Magazine A new suggestion that complexity increases over time, not just in living organisms but in the nonliving world, promises to rewrite notions of time and evolution.

Researchers are proposing nothing less than a new law of nature.

How many lines lie on a cubic surface? (The answer is 27.) A statement that’s been known for nearly 180 years has recently gained fresh nuance and relevance. www.quantamagazine.org/new-math-rev...

“In biology, breaking isn’t always a failure,” said the developmental biologist Rashmi Priya (right). “It’s often a necessary step in building something new.”

www.quantamagazine.org/break-it-to-...

What Crystals Older Than the Sun Reveal About the Start of the Solar System | Quanta Magazine Microscopic crystals extracted from meteorites could help settle a debate about the birth of our patch of the Milky Way.

How was our patch of the Milky Way born? Microscopic grains older than the sun are providing clues. @jamesdinneen.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/what-crystal...

What if the inside of black holes are a roiling sea of space and time stretching and compressing in multiple directions? www.quantamagazine.org/new-maps-of-...

As a mouse blastocyst forms, tiny bubbles pry cells apart, creating a hollow space for the fetus to grow inside. www.quantamagazine.org/break-it-to-...

The Man Who Stole Infinity | Quanta Magazine In an 1874 paper, Georg Cantor proved that there are different sizes of infinity and changed math forever. A trove of newly unearthed letters shows that it was also an act of plagiarism.

Infinity has Georg Cantor. But it’s not as simple as that.
www.quantamagazine.org/the-man-who-...

We’re used to tidy narratives of discovery. “Every branch of science needs a hero,” said historian José Ferreirós. “Chemistry has Lavoisier, mechanics has Newton, relativity has Einstein. There’s always this one, only one. But that’s always a lie.”

As we age, the delicate equilibrium of our billions of neurons can teeter — sometimes with serious cognitive consequences. But new research into neuronal regulators is helping us better understand how to re-level things once the scale has been tipped. www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-brai...

Break It To Make It: How Fracturing Sculpts Tissues and Organs | Quanta Magazine Growing tissues can crack, break, and dissociate to form structures that can later withstand immense forces.

Sometimes, the only way to build back up is to let everything fall apart. This is certainly true at the cellular level. www.quantamagazine.org/break-it-to-...

The Hidden Math of Ocean Waves Crashes Into View | Quanta Magazine The math of even the simplest ocean waves is notoriously uncooperative. A team of Italian mathematicians has made major advances toward understanding it.

Alberto Maspero (left) and Massimiliano Berti work in offices on a hill above the ancient port of Trieste, Italy, where wild winds sometimes push waves back toward the sea. Here, the mathematicians study the math underlying how waves change, shift, and die.

The mathematician and podcaster Demian Goos has been obsessed with the story of set theory’s birth for years. Last March, he found a letter from 1873 that was thought to have been destroyed during the Second World War. It rewrites the story he thought he knew.
www.quantamagazine.org/the-man-who-...

This “living crystal” is a clump of rotating, jiggling starfish embryos in the lab of the biophysicist Nikta Fakhri. It embodies a state of matter known as an odd material that may have previously unknown biological functions. www.quantamagazine.org/starfish-whi...

The Evolving Foundations of Math | Quanta Magazine An exploration of how mathematicians are still renovating and rebuilding the core pillars of their field today.

In “The Evolving Foundations of Math,” a new special series launched today, Quanta Magazine explores how mathematicians are still renovating and rebuilding the core pillars of their field. Explore the series homepage for more: www.quantamagazine.org/series/the-e...

How Many Numbers Exist? Infinity Proof Moves Math Closer to an Answer. | Quanta Magazine For 50 years, mathematicians have believed that the total number of real numbers is unknowable. A new proof suggests otherwise.

If there are an infinite number of infinities, which one corresponds to the real numbers? www.quantamagazine.org/how-many-num...

How Can Infinity Come in Many Sizes? | Quanta Magazine Intuition breaks down once we’re dealing with the endless. To begin with: Some infinities are bigger than others.

In Cantor’s momentous paper, he showed that infinity can come in different sizes. What does that mean? Explore our visual explainer: www.quantamagazine.org/how-can-infi...

The Man Who Stole Infinity | Quanta Magazine In an 1874 paper, Georg Cantor proved that there are different sizes of infinity and changed math forever. A trove of newly unearthed letters shows that it was also an act of plagiarism.

In the first chapter of our new series, Joseph Howlett recounts the hard-fought journey to embed the concept of infinity into math’s foundations, and the betrayal that made it possible. The real story is a lot more complicated than the one you’ve been told. www.quantamagazine.org/the-man-who-...

In 1874, Georg Cantor published one of the most important papers in math’s 4,000-year history. The ideas in it were stolen. 🧵

Decoding the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics Podcast Episode · The Quanta Podcast · February 24 · 30m

Physicists often must switch between two frameworks: quantum for small stuff, classical for big. Can the idea of decoherence be the bridge?

Tune in to The Quanta Podcast:
Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/d...
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/7lQn...

Origami crease patterns reveal hidden secrets about the amplituhedron, a shape that physicists use to calculate particle collisions. www.quantamagazine.org/origami-patt...