Quanta Magazine | Science and Math News
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Latest Articles
Computer Scientists Figure Out How To Prove Lies
An attack on a fundamental proof technique reveals a glaring security issue for blockchains and other digital encryption schemes.
New Sphere-Packing Record Stems From an Unexpected Source
After just a few months of work, a complete newcomer to the world of sphere packing has solved one of its biggest open problems.
How Smell Guides Our Inner World
A better understanding of human smell is emerging as scientists interrogate its fundamental elements: the odor molecules that enter your nose and the individual neurons that translate them into perception in your brain.
Physicists Start To Pin Down How Stars Forge Heavy Atoms
The precursors of heavy elements might arise in the plasma underbellies of swollen stars or in smoldering stellar corpses. They definitely exist in East Lansing, Michigan.
Researchers Uncover Hidden Ingredients Behind AI Creativity
Image generators are designed to mimic their training data, so where does their apparent creativity come from? A recent study suggests that it’s an inevitable by-product of their architecture.
A New Pyramid-Like Shape Always Lands the Same Side Up
A tetrahedron is the simplest Platonic solid. Mathematicians have now made one that’s stable only on one side, confirming a decades-old conjecture.
Matter vs. Force: Why There Are Exactly Two Types of Particles
Every elementary particle falls into one of two categories. Collectivist bosons account for the forces that move us while individualist fermions keep our atoms from collapsing.
Is Mathematics Mostly Chaos or Mostly Order?
Two new notions of infinity challenge a long-standing plan to define the mathematical universe.
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Mirror Molecules: The Symmetry Rule Life Never Breaks
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Special Features
Quanta Podcast
Is Gravity Just Entropy Rising? Long-Shot Idea Gets Another Look.
A new argument explores how the growth of disorder could cause massive objects to move toward one another. Physicists are both interested and skeptical.
Multimedia
How Can AI ID a Cat? An Illustrated Guide.
Neural networks power today’s AI boom. To understand them, all we need is a map, a cat and a few thousand dimensions.
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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.
