Science and Math News | Quanta Magazine
Illuminating basic science and math research through public service journalism. Quanta 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.
How Earth’s Climate Changes Naturally (and Why Things Are …
Jul 21, 2020 · Earth’s climate has fluctuated through deep time, pushed by these 10 different causes. Here’s how each compares with modern climate change. Orbital wobbles, plate tectonics, evolutionary changes and other factors have sent the planet in and out of ice ages. Pablo A. Cumillaf. Earth has been a snowball and a hothouse at different times in ...
A New Map of All the Particles and Forces | Quanta Magazine
Oct 22, 2020 · We’ve created a new way to explore the fundamental constituents of the universe. 68. Ashley Mackenzie for Quanta Magazine. [Editor’s note: The full, interactive map is available below.] All of nature springs from a handful of components — the fundamental particles — that interact with one another in only a few different ways.
The Mystery at the Heart of Physics That Only Math Can Solve
Jun 10, 2021 · The accelerating effort to understand the mathematics of quantum field theory will have profound consequences for both math and physics. Olena Shmahalo/Quanta Magazine. Over the past century, quantum field theory has proved to be the single most sweeping and successful physical theory ever invented. It is an umbrella term that encompasses many ...
Physicists Create a Holographic Wormhole Using a Quantum …
Nov 30, 2022 · Physicists have purportedly created the first-ever wormhole, a kind of tunnel theorized in 1935 by Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen that leads from one place to another by passing into an extra dimension of space. The wormhole emerged like a hologram out of quantum bits of information, or “qubits,” stored in tiny superconducting circuits.
Physics News, Interviews and Columns | Quanta Magazine
Physicists Reveal a Quantum Geometry That Exists Outside of Space and Time. By Charlie Wood. September 25, 2024. A decade after the discovery of the “amplituhedron,” physicists have excavated more of the timeless geometry underlying the standard picture of how particles move. fundamental physics.
What Is a Particle? - Quanta Magazine
Nov 12, 2020 · A Particle Is a ‘Collapsed Wave Function’ 1. The quest to understand nature’s fundamental building blocks began with the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus’s assertion that such things exist. Two millennia later, Isaac Newton and Christiaan Huygens debated whether light is made of particles or waves.
How the Physics of Resonance Shapes Reality | Quanta Magazine
Jan 26, 2022 · Here’s how the same effect manifests in such varied settings, from everyday life down to the smallest scales. In its simplest form, resonance occurs when an object experiences an oscillating force that’s close to one of its “natural” frequencies, at which it easily oscillates. That objects have natural frequencies “is one of the ...
How the Physics of Nothing Underlies Everything
Aug 9, 2022 · An instability in the vacuum of space could suddenly spawn a rapidly expanding bubble with no interior — true nothingness. Merrill Sherman/Quanta Magazine. Millennia ago, Aristotle asserted that nature abhors a vacuum, reasoning that objects would fly through truly empty space at impossible speeds. In 1277, the French bishop Etienne Tempier ...
Mathematician Proves Huge Result on ‘Dangerous’ Problem
Dec 11, 2019 · Lothar Collatz likely posed the eponymous conjecture in the 1930s. The problem sounds like a party trick. Pick a number, any number. If it’s odd, multiply it by 3 and add 1. If it’s even, divide it by 2. Now you have a new number. Apply the same rules to the new number. The conjecture is about what happens as you keep repeating the process.