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Brain’s ‘Background Noise’ May Hold Clues to Persistent Mysteries
By digging out signals hidden within the brain’s electrical chatter, scientists are getting new insights into sleep, aging and more.
What Dust From Space Tells Us About Ourselves
Micrometeorites constantly fall on every corner of Earth. Matthew Genge is using these shards of interplanetary space to understand Earth and its place in the solar system.
Some Proteins Change Their Folds to Perform Different Jobs
Unusual proteins that can quickly fold into different shapes provide cells with a novel regulatory mechanism.
Tetrahedron Solutions Finally Proved Decades After Computer Search
Four mathematicians have cataloged all the tetrahedra with rational angles, resolving a question about basic geometric shapes using techniques from number theory.
Rumbles on Mars Raise Hopes of Underground Magma Flows
Small and cold, Mars has long been considered a dead planet. But a series of recent discoveries has forced scientists to rethink how recently its insides stopped churning — if they ever stopped at all.
The Hard Lessons of Modeling the Coronavirus Pandemic
In the fight against COVID-19, disease modelers have struggled against misunderstanding and misuse of their work. They have also come to realize how unready the state of modeling was for this pandemic.
‘Unicorn’ Discovery Points to a New Population of Black Holes
Small black holes were nowhere to be found, leading astronomers to wonder if they didn’t exist at all. Now a series of findings, including a “unicorn” black hole, has raised hopes of solving the decade-long mystery.
Topology 101: The Hole Truth
The relationships among the properties of flexible shapes have fascinated mathematicians for centuries.
Physicists Study How Universes Might Bubble Up and Collide
Since they can’t prod actual universes as they inflate and bump into each other in the hypothetical multiverse, physicists are studying digital and physical analogs of the process.