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A Long-Sought Proof, Found and Almost Lost
When a German retiree proved a famous long-standing mathematical conjecture, the response was underwhelming. Thomas Royen at his home in Schwalbach am Taunus, Germany. As he was brushing his teeth...
Solution: ‘A Ticking Evolutionary Clock’
...some biological realism. Making accurate models requires the math to follow the biology and not vice versa. And when conclusions are drawn from mathematical models, it is best to use...
A Map of Human History, Hidden in DNA
...out. His mathematical chops have served him well in this endeavor. His innovative analyses and new ways of visualizing complex data reveal the genetic signatures of ancestry and the surprising...
Pencils Down: Soni Midha of East Side Community High School
In school or in life, Soni Midha wants her math students to be able to prove why something is correct. Max Cantor and Lisa Iaboni for Quanta Magazine...
Tim Maudlin: A Defense of the Reality of Time
Tim Maudlin explains how math has led physicists to believe some very strange things about the nature of time. Edwin Tse for Quanta Magazine...
A Defense of the Reality of Time
...reality. Change is real, as opposed to an illusion or an artifact of perspective. The laws of physics act within time to generate each moment. Mixing mathematics, physics and philosophy,...
A Theory of Reality as More Than the Sum of Its Parts
New math shows how, contrary to conventional scientific wisdom, conscious beings and other macroscopic entities might have greater influence over the future than does the sum of their microscopic components....
Solution: ‘Why Are There Two Sexes?’
The mathematical concept of parity and the fatal flaw of serial multiplication can help explain why having two sexes usually works better than having one or three. Our July Insights...
The Prime Rib Problem
...of $1 million from the Clay Mathematics Institute, and which some physicists are attacking using quantum mechanics. Primes invoke in mathematicians a deep sense of awe and continue to inspire...