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Mathematicians Disprove Conjecture Made to Save Black Holes
...evolution indefinitely far into the future. The dictum holds true whether you’re using Newton’s laws to predict the future position of a billiard ball, Maxwell’s equations to describe an electromagnetic...
The Math That Tells Cells What They Are
...would be getting optimized. Moreover, while evolutionary theory suggests that evolving systems can improve over time, nothing guarantees that they should be driven to an optimal level. Yet when researchers...
Did the Chicken Come First or Is It Turtles All the Way Down?
...others are more whimsical and subjective, but hopefully all will be illuminating. In biology, the problem of infinite regress has been solved by Darwin’s theory of evolution, a feat so...
Cori Bargmann on the Genetics of Transparent Worms, Supertasters and Cancer
...is there such a thing as — over evolutionary times — just getting genes going — what’s the word — like, going defunct, because they’re not getting used anymore? Bargmann:...
Solution: ‘Is It Turtles All the Way Down?’
...in which 7 million years of evolutionary history are compressed into less than three minutes. At what point in the video would it no longer surprise you to see the...
Did Viruses Create the Nucleus? The Answer May Be Near.
...And a truly persuasive origin story must also explain why the nucleus exists at all — what evolutionary pressures pushed those ancient cells to wall up their genomes. For most...
Rumbles on Mars Raise Hopes of Underground Magma Flows
...slowly.” We have almost no certain knowledge about the inside of worlds, including our own. That’s a problem. “With few exceptions, the thermal evolution of a planet governs everything,” said...
Eve Marder on the Crucial Resilience of Neurons
...work. So, biology has to be able to tolerate diversity, and that probably it uses diversity in all kinds of ways as grist for evolution. Marder: Right. Exactly. So, that’s...
![A video of a large chunk of ice breaking off of a glacier and crashing into the ocean.]](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Predicting-Tipping-Points_520x292.jpg)
Chaos Researchers Can Now Predict Perilous Points of No Return
...network could predict the evolution of stationary chaotic systems (which don’t have tipping points) stunningly far into the future. The network relied only on records of the chaotic system’s past...