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After 20 Years, Math Couple Solves Major Group Theory Problem

Britta Späth has dedicated her career to proving a single, central conjecture. She’s finally succeeded, alongside her partner, Marc Cabanes.

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Catalytic Computing Taps the Full Power of a Full Hard Drive

Ten years ago, researchers proved that adding full memory can theoretically aid computation. They’re just now beginning to understand the implications.

The Largest Sofa You Can Move Around a Corner

A new proof reveals the answer to the decades-old “moving sofa” problem. It highlights how even the simplest optimization problems can have counterintuitive answers.

How Hans Bethe Stumbled Upon Perfect Quantum Theories

Quantum calculations amount to sophisticated estimates. But in 1931, Hans Bethe intuited precisely how a chain of particles would behave — an insight that had far-reaching consequences.

Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture

A young computer scientist and two colleagues show that searches within data structures called hash tables can be much faster than previously deemed possible.

The Poetry Fan Who Taught an LLM to Read and Write DNA

By treating DNA as a language, Brian Hie’s “ChatGPT for genomes” could pick up patterns that humans can’t see, accelerating biological design.

New Proofs Probe the Limits of Mathematical Truth

By proving a broader version of Hilbert’s famous 10th problem, two groups of mathematicians have expanded the realm of mathematical unknowability.

Chatbot Software Begins to Face Fundamental Limitations

Recent results show that large language models struggle with compositional tasks, suggesting a hard limit to their abilities.

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Why Some People Don’t ‘See’ Mental Imagery: Aphantasia

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The Thought Experiments That Fray the Fabric of Space-Time

These three imagined scenarios lead many physicists to doubt that space-time is fundamental.

The Joy of Why


Planets surrounding Earth
00:00 / 37:48

The first planet beyond our solar system was identified just 30 years ago. Since then, thousands have been found and characterized. As we look for more, exoplanet experts are also probing for signs of alien biospheres hundreds of light-years away. In this episode, co-host Janna Levin speaks with astrophysicist and astrobiologist Lisa Kaltenegger about how we’ll know we’re not alone in the cosmos.

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Illuminating basic science and math research through public service journalism.

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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. Launched and funded by the Simons Foundation, Quanta is editorially independent — our articles do not reflect or represent the views of the foundation.

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