Category: Quantum Stuff

In 1777—after whipping local people for trivial offenses, spreading venereal disease, and clumsily avoiding a plot to kill him—the English explorer James Cook left the shores of Tonga laden with treasures. Not least among them was a word scrawled in his ship’s logbook: tabu, which he defined as “a thing that is forbidden,” like a… Continue reading How Taboos Can Help Protect the Oceans – Issue 100: Outsiders

Sorting a collection of shapes is child’s play. Circles here, squares there, triangles in their own pile. But if you take the task seriously, there’s a lot more to it. In fact, one of the largest subdisciplines in mathematics — topology — is devoted exactly to this kind of endeavor, and after centuries of concerted… Continue reading In Topology, When Are Two Shapes the Same?

Debate over the idea that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus emerged from a laboratory has escalated over the past few weeks, coinciding with the annual World Health Assembly, at which the World Health Organization (WHO) and officials from nearly 200 countries discussed the COVID-19 pandemic. After last year’s assembly, the WHO agreed to sponsor the first phase… Continue reading The COVID Lab-Leak Hypothesis: What Scientists Do and Do Not Know

One of the most important pieces of mathematical knowledge was on the verge of being lost, maybe forever. Now, a new book hopes to save it. The Disc Embedding Theorem rewrites a proof completed in 1981 by Michael Freedman — about an infinite network of discs — after years of solitary toil on the California… Continue reading New Math Book Rescues Landmark Topology Proof

Footage of a mob storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to subvert the legal and peaceful transfer of power, filled many of us with horror. Underlying that response was our indignation at the brazen violation of central democratic institutions and values. We respond similarly to news of hate crimes, mass shootings,… Continue reading Are We Cut Out for Universal Morality? – Issue 100: Outsiders

I can’t see them. Therefore they’re not real.” From which century was this quote drawn? Not a medieval one. The utterance emerged in February 2019 from Fox & Friends presenter Pete Hegseth, who was referring to … germs. The former Princeton University undergraduate and Afghanistan counterinsurgency instructor said, to the mirth of his co-hosts, that… Continue reading Why Misinformation Is About Who You Trust, Not What You Think – Issue 100: Outsiders

These and other surprising examples made it clear that mathematicians needed to prove that dimension is a real notion and that, for instance, n- and m-dimension Euclidean spaces are different in some fundamental way when n ≠ m. This objective became known as the “invariance of dimension” problem. Finally, in 1912, almost half a century after Cantor’s… Continue reading The Journey to Define Dimension

Ford Motor Co. nearly tripled its electric vehicle sales last month, according to a company report. The auto giant increased its EV and hybrid sales this May by 184% compared to May 2020, marking a record number of 10,364 EVs sold in a given month, the sales report found. The significant increase is due in part to… Continue reading Electric Vehicle Orders Are Zooming at Ford

Imagine you’re a general in ancient times and you want to keep your troop counts secret from your enemies. But you also need to know this information yourself. So you turn to a math trick that allows you to achieve both aims. In a morning drill you ask your soldiers to line up in rows… Continue reading How Ancient War Trickery Is Alive in Math Today

After four years of an agenda that favored polluters, a new day is dawning at the Department of the Interior. In March, communities across the country rejoiced in Secretary Deb Haaland’s historic confirmation to lead the biggest and most powerful land management agency in the country. Now, she’s taking the opportunity to pursue real reforms… Continue reading Any Reform of Federal Oil and Gas Leasing Must Include Environmental Justice