A new origins-based system for classifying minerals reveals the huge geochemical imprint that life has left on Earth. It could help us identify other worlds with life too. The post Life Helps Make Almost Half of All Minerals on Earth first

A new proof identifies precisely how large a mathematical graph must be before it contains a regular substructure. The post Mathematical Connect-the-Dots Reveals How Structure Emerges first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Quantum computers may derive their power from the “magical” way that properties of particles change depending on the context. The post The Spooky Quantum Phenomenon You’ve Never Heard Of first appeared on Quanta Magazine

For decades mathematicians have searched for a specific pair of surfaces that can’t be transformed into each other in four-dimensional space. Now they’ve found them. The post Surfaces So Different Even a Fourth Dimension Can’t Make Them th

The lush biodiversity of the Amazon may be due in part to the dynamics of branching rivers, which serve as invisible fences that continuously barricade and merge bird populations. The post Reshuffled Rivers Bolster the Amazon’s Hyper-Biodi

Jared Duker Lichtman, 26, has proved a longstanding conjecture relating prime numbers to a broad class of “primitive” sets. To his adviser, it came as a “complete shock.” The post Graduate Student’s Side Project Proves Prime Number Conjec

RNA and peptides coevolving in the primordial world might have jointly served as a precursor to the modern ribosome. The post Life’s First Peptides May Have Grown on RNA Strands first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Why verify every line of a proof, when just a few checks will do? The post How Computer Scientists Learned to Reinvent the Proof first appeared on Quanta Magazine

“Ribbon concordance” will let mathematicians compare knots by linking them across four-dimensional space. The post How Complex Is a Knot? New Proof Reveals Ranking System That Works. first appeared on Quanta Magazine

By resolving a paradox about light in a box, researchers hope to clarify the concept of energy in quantum theory. The post Puzzling Quantum Scenario Appears Not to Conserve Energy first appeared on Quanta Magazine

In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope released a historic image of a supermassive black hole in another galaxy. The follow-up — an image of Sagittarius A* — shows it shimmering at the center of our own. The post Black Hole Image Reveals the

Several projects are aiming to bring back mammoths and other species that have vanished from the planet. Whether that’s technically possible is beside the point. The post Why ‘De-Extinction’ Is Impossible (But Could Work Anyway) first appe

Throwing out data seems to make measurements of distances and angles more precise. The reason why has been traced to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. The post Physicists Pin Down How Quantum Uncertainty Sharpens Measurements first appea

Van der Waerden’s conjecture mystified mathematicians for 85 years. Its solution shows how polynomial roots relate to one another. The post New Proof Illuminates the Hidden Structure of Common Equations first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Cryptographers want to know which of five possible worlds we inhabit, which will reveal whether truly secure cryptography is even possible. The post Which Computational Universe Do We Live In? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Language processing programs are notoriously hard to interpret, but smaller versions can provide important insights into how they work. The post Researchers Gain New Understanding From Simple AI first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Life could use a more expansive genetic code in theory, but new work shows that improving on three-letter codons would be a challenge. The post Life With Longer Genetic Codes Seems Possible — but Less Likely first appeared on Quanta Magazi

A new analysis of W bosons suggests these particles are significantly heavier than predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. The post Newly Measured Particle Seems Heavy Enough to Break Known Physics first appeared on Quanta Mag

The optical properties of mitochondrial bundles in the retina may improve how efficiently the eye captures light. The post Mitochondria Double as Tiny Lenses in the Eye first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The result could help researchers answer a larger question about flattening objects from the fourth dimension to the third dimension. The post Father-Son Team Solves Geometry Problem With Infinite Folds first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The American mathematician invented entire new ways to understand shapes and spaces. The post Dennis Sullivan, Uniter of Topology and Chaos, Wins the Abel Prize first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Physicists are devising clever new ways to exploit the extreme sensitivity of gravitational wave detectors like LIGO. But so far, they’ve seen no signs of exotica. The post A New Tool for Finding Dark Matter Digs Up Nothing first appeared

An experiment conducted on hybrid matter-antimatter atoms has defied researchers’ expectations. The post An Antimatter Experiment Shows Surprises Near Absolute Zero first appeared on Quanta Magazine

A new proof significantly strengthens a decades-old result about the ubiquity of ways to represent whole numbers as sums of unit fractions. The post Math’s ‘Oldest Problem Ever’ Gets a New Answer first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The discovery that short peptides can form spontaneously on cosmic dust hints at more of a role for them in the earliest stages of life’s origin, on Earth or elsewhere. The post Peptides on Stardust May Have Provided a Shortcut to Life fir

A new computer program fashioned after artificial intelligence systems like AlphaGo has solved several open problems in combinatorics and graph theory. The post In New Math Proofs, Artificial Intelligence Plays to Win first appeared on Qua

While watching a fearful memory take shape in the brain of a living fish, neuroscientists see an unexpected level of rewiring occur in the synaptic connections. The post Scientists Watch a Memory Form in a Living Brain first appeared on Qu

When astronomers tried to confirm a signal from the birth of the first stars after the Big Bang, they saw nothing. The post Four Years On, New Experiment Sees No Sign of ‘Cosmic Dawn’ first appeared on Quanta Magazine

A 3D digital model of a “minimal cell” leads scientists closer to understanding the barest requirements for life. The post Most Complete Simulation of a Cell Probes Life’s Hidden Rules first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Algorithms that use the brain’s communication signal can now work on analog neuromorphic chips, which closely mimic our energy-efficient brains. The post AI Overcomes Stumbling Block on Brain-Inspired Hardware first appeared on Quanta Maga