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The Complex Truth About ‘Junk DNA’

September 1, 2021

Genomes hold immense quantities of noncoding DNA. Some of it is essential for life, some seems useless, and some has its own agenda.

Banach-Tarski and the Paradox of Infinite Cloning

August 26, 2021

One of the strangest results in mathematics explains how it’s possible to turn one sphere into two identical copies, simply by rearranging its pieces.

Neither Star nor Planet: A Strange Brown Dwarf Puzzles Astronomers

August 4, 2021

Brown dwarfs such as “The Accident” are illuminating the murky borderlands that separate planets from stars.

Galois Groups and the Symmetries of Polynomials

August 3, 2021

By focusing on relationships between solutions to polynomial equations, rather than the exact solutions themselves, Évariste Galois changed the course of modern mathematics.

The ‘Weirdest’ Matter, Made of Partial Particles, Defies Description

July 26, 2021

Theorists are in a frenzy over “fractons,” bizarre, but potentially useful, hypothetical particles that can only move in combination with one another.

How Bell’s Theorem Proved ‘Spooky Action at a Distance’ Is Real

July 20, 2021

The root of today’s quantum revolution was John Stewart Bell’s 1964 theorem showing that quantum mechanics really permits instantaneous connections between far-apart locations.

How ‘Long COVID’ Keeps Us Sick

July 1, 2021

Other diseases with long-term symptoms can help us understand how COVID can affect us long after the virus itself is gone.

Brighter Than a Billion Billion Suns: Gamma-Ray Bursts Continue to Surprise

June 30, 2021

These ultrabright flashes have recently been tracked for days, upending ideas about the cataclysms that create them.

How Animals Color Themselves With Nanoscale Structures

June 16, 2021

Animals sculpt the optical properties of their tissues at the nanoscale to give themselves “structural colors.” New work is piecing together how they do it.

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