Nash Weerasekera for Quanta Magazine
By extending the scope of the key insight behind Fermat’s Last Theorem, four mathematicians have made great strides toward building a “grand unified theory” of math.
Reversible programs run backward as easily as they run forward, saving energy in theory. After decades of research, they may soon power AI.
Manu Prakash works on the world’s most urgent problems and seemingly frivolous questions at the same time. They add up to a philosophy he calls “recreational biology.”
Black hole and Big Bang singularities break our best theory of gravity. A trilogy of theorems hints that physicists must go to the ends of space and time to find a fix.
A new proof illuminates the hidden patterns that emerge when addition becomes impossible.
Slight changes in the number, shape, efficiency and interconnectedness of organelles in the cells of flight muscles provide extra energy for birds’ continent-spanning feats.
Turbulence is a notoriously difficult phenomenon to study. Mathematicians are now starting to untangle it at its smallest scales.
From living matter to molecules to elementary particles, the world is made of “chiral” objects that differ from their reflected forms.
Christopher W. Young/Quanta Magazine
Promise and controversy continues to surround string theory as a potential unified theory of everything. In the latest episode of The Joy of Why, Cumrun Vafa discusses his progress in trying to find good, testable models hidden among the ‘swampland’ of impossible universes.
These three imagined scenarios lead many physicists to doubt that space-time is fundamental.
Illuminating basic science and math research through public service journalism.
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