The renowned British physicist, who died at 76, left behind a riddle that could eventually lead his successors to the theory of quantum gravity.| Quanta Magazine
According to Einstein’s theory of gravity, black holes have only a small handful of distinguishing characteristics. Quantum theory implies they may have more. Now an experimental search finds that any of this extra ‘hair’ has to be pretty short.| Quanta Magazine
To buffer the brain against menaces in the blood, a dynamic, multi-tiered system of protection is built into the brain’s blood vessels.| Quanta Magazine
The effects of insufficient water are felt by every cell in the body, but it’s the brain that manifests our experience of thirst.| Quanta Magazine
Kevin Hartnett was the senior writer at Quanta Magazine covering mathematics and computer science. His work has been collected in multiple volumes of the “Best Writing on Mathematics” series.| Quanta Magazine
After finding the homeschooling life confining, the teen petitioned her way into a graduate class at Berkeley, where she ended up disproving a 40-year-old conjecture.| Quanta Magazine
A canonical problem in computer science is to find the shortest route to every point in a network. A new approach beats the classic algorithm taught in textbooks.| Quanta Magazine
Explore Quanta’s information theory coverage.| Quanta Magazine
A simple, widely used mathematical technique can finally be applied to boundlessly complex problems.| Quanta Magazine
Last year, an enormous map of the cosmos hinted that the engine driving cosmic expansion might be sputtering. Now physicists are back with an even bigger map, and a stronger conclusion.| Quanta Magazine
Tony Tyson’s cameras revealed the universe’s dark contents. Now, with the Rubin Observatory’s 3.2-billion-pixel camera, he’s ready to study dark matter and dark energy in unprecedented detail.| Quanta Magazine
An attack on a fundamental proof technique reveals a glaring security issue for blockchains and other digital encryption schemes.| Quanta Magazine
Four mathematicians broke a 75-year-old record by finding a denser way to pack high-dimensional spheres.| Quanta Magazine
After just a few months of work, a complete newcomer to the world of sphere packing has solved one of its biggest open problems.| Quanta Magazine
The Frauchiger-Renner thought experiment has shaken up the world of quantum foundations.| Quanta Magazine
Generations of researchers have pursued his “Langlands program,” which seeks to create a grand unified theory of mathematics.| Quanta Magazine
At 86, Britain’s preeminent mathematical matchmaker is still tackling the big questions and dreaming of a union between the quantum and the gravitational forces.| Quanta Magazine
As the role of computers in pure mathematics grows, researchers debate their reliability.| Quanta Magazine
The precursors of heavy elements might arise in the plasma underbellies of swollen stars or in smoldering stellar corpses. They definitely exist in East Lansing, Michigan.| Quanta Magazine
The legendary mathematician, who died on April 11, was curious, colorful and one of the greatest problem-solvers of his generation.| Quanta Magazine
A tetrahedron is the simplest Platonic solid. Mathematicians have now made one that’s stable only on one side, confirming a decades-old conjecture.| Quanta Magazine
A new argument explores how the growth of disorder could cause massive objects to move toward one another. Physicists are both interested and skeptical.| Quanta Magazine
Explore Quanta’s geometry coverage.| Quanta Magazine
A new proof marks major progress toward solving the Kakeya conjecture, a deceptively simple question that underpins a tower of conjectures.| Quanta Magazine
Joseph Howlett is a math writer for Quanta Magazine. His articles have been published Scientific American, The San Francisco Chronicle and Gizmodo, among other places. He has a Ph.D.| Quanta Magazine
On its surface, the Kakeya conjecture is a simple statement about rotating needles. But it underlies a wealth of mathematics.| Quanta Magazine
Reversible programs run backward as easily as they run forward, saving energy in theory. After decades of research, they may soon power AI.| Quanta Magazine
A new proof represents the culmination of a 65-year-old story about anomalous shapes in special dimensions.| Quanta Magazine
Today’s information age is only possible thanks to the groundbreaking work of a lone genius.| Quanta Magazine
Illuminating mathematics, physics, biology and computer science research through public service journalism.| Quanta Magazine
The Ukrainian mathematician Maryna Viazovska has solved the centuries-old sphere-packing problem in dimensions eight and 24.| Quanta Magazine
A virtually unknown researcher has made a great advance in one of mathematics’ oldest problems, the twin primes conjecture.| Quanta Magazine
To determine the nature of infinity, mathematicians face a choice between two new logical axioms. What they decide could help shape the future of mathematical truth.| Quanta Magazine
Crows recently demonstrated an understanding of the concept of zero. It’s only the latest evidence of animals’ talents for numerical abstraction — which may still differ from our own grasp of numbers.| Quanta Magazine
Complex neural circuits likely arose independently in birds and mammals, suggesting that vertebrates evolved intelligence multiple times.| Quanta Magazine
The deceptively simple Kakeya conjecture has bedeviled mathematicians for 50 years. A new proof of the conjecture in three dimensions illuminates a whole crop of related problems.| Quanta Magazine
A young computer scientist and two colleagues show that searches within data structures called hash tables can be much faster than previously deemed possible.| Quanta Magazine
Recent results show that large language models struggle with compositional tasks, suggesting a hard limit to their abilities.| Quanta Magazine
The library sorting problem is used across computer science for organizing far more than just books. A new solution is less than a page-width away from the theoretical ideal.| Quanta Magazine
In the late 19th century, Karl Weierstrass invented a fractal-like function that was decried as nothing less than a “deplorable evil.” In time, it would transform the foundations of mathematics.| Quanta Magazine
A new proof marks the first progress in decades on important cases of the so-called kissing problem. Getting there meant doing away with traditional approaches.| Quanta Magazine
His incompleteness theorems destroyed the search for a mathematical theory of everything. Nearly a century later, we’re still coming to grips with the consequences.| Quanta Magazine
A new theory explains the seemingly irreversible arrow of time while yielding insights into entropy, quantum computers, black holes, and the past-future divide.| Quanta Magazine
Three high schoolers and their mentor revisited a century-old theorem to prove that all knots can be found in a fractal called the Menger sponge.| Quanta Magazine
Why Computer Scientists Consult Oracles| Quanta Magazine
The security system that underlies the internet makes use of a curious fact: You can broadcast part of your encryption to make your information much more secure.| Quanta Magazine
We’ve created a new way to explore the fundamental constituents of the universe.| Quanta Magazine
While devising a new quantum algorithm, four researchers accidentally established a hard limit on the “spooky” phenomenon.| Quanta Magazine
Explore Quanta’s cosmology coverage.| Quanta Magazine
In work that has been 30 years in the making, mathematicians have proved a major part of a profound mathematical vision called the Langlands program.| Quanta Magazine
A brain circuit that suppresses distracting sensory information holds important clues about attention and other cognitive processes.| Quanta Magazine
Three years ago, Google’s AlphaFold pulled off the biggest artificial intelligence breakthrough in science to date, accelerating molecular research and kindling deep questions about why we do science.| Quanta Magazine
A generation of physicists has referred to the dark energy that permeates the universe as “the cosmological constant.” Now the largest map of the cosmos to date hints that this mysterious energy has been changing over billions of years.| Quanta Magazine
Mathematicians have disproved a major conjecture about the relationship between curvature and shape.| Quanta Magazine
Decades after the landmark proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem, ideas abound for how to make it even more reliable. But such efforts reflect a deep misunderstanding of what makes the proof so important.| Quanta Magazine
Large language models like ChatGPT are now big enough that they’ve started to display startling, unpredictable behaviors.| Quanta Magazine