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Latest Articles
How Virus-like ‘Jumping Genes’ Became Our Partners in Evolution
Half of our genome is made of transposons — snips of DNA that can move and copy themselves. But they’re more than parasites or genetic junk.
Mathematicians Build Long-Awaited Graph Sandwich
The proof of a decades-old conjecture has given researchers a new way to understand complex networks.
Ctenophores Aren’t Just Beautiful. They’re Biological Wonders.
Comb jellies are helping answer fundamental questions in biology, from how the earliest nervous systems evolved to how bioluminescence works.
Black Holes or Black Hole Stars? Astronomers Spar Over Webb Telescope’s ‘Little Red Dots.’
The James Webb Space Telescope spots mysterious “little red dots” everywhere. A bold new theory suggests they’re suns dozens of times larger than our entire solar system.
Why Do These Fossil Shells Flip Their Spirals Every Few Millennia?
The mystery of the flipping foraminifera may conceal a rarely observed evolutionary process playing out across the planet.
What Is Math’s Mysterious Langlands Program Really About?
Hidden correspondences hint at a deeper structure to the mathematical universe. Our columnist unpacks one of those connections and asks mathematicians what they might mean.
AI Has Solved One of Math’s $1 Million Millennium Prize Problems
Mathematicians at OpenAI showed that the Navier-Stokes equations, which describe how fluids flow, can sometimes “blow up.” But the massive result is not without controversy.
In an Age of AI, a Physicist Seeks What Endures
Sarah Demers, chair of the physics department at Yale University, sees the potential for large language models to both help and harm her field.
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The Navier-Stokes Equations, Explained
Emily Buder/Quanta Magazine and Emily Zhang
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The Four-Color Theorem Gets a Rare New Proof
By revisiting the famous problem — which was controversially solved in the 1970s with the help of computers — mathematicians have gained important new insights into the nature of graphs.
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How Can Infinity Come in Many Sizes?
Intuition breaks down once we’re dealing with the endless. To begin with: Some infinities are bigger than others.
About Quanta Magazine
Illuminating basic science and math research through public service journalism.
More about usQuanta 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.
