Category: Quantum Stuff

Geometry is one of the oldest disciplines in human history, yet the worlds it can describe extend far beyond its original use. What began thousands of years ago as a way to measure land and build pyramids was given rigor by Euclid in ancient Greece, became applied to curves and surfaces in the 19th century,… Continue reading How Did Geometry Create Modern Physics?

For all the world’s linguistic diversity, human languages still obey certain universal patterns. These run deeper than grammar and syntax; they’re rooted in statistical laws that predict how frequently we use certain words and how long those words tend to be. Think of them as built-in guardrails to keep language easy to learn and use.… Continue reading Whale Songs Obey Basic Rules of Human Languages

They started by imagining a very fine grid superimposed on their fluid. They then computed how long particles spent in each square of the grid, on average. In some squares, the fluid acted like a rushing river: Particles tended to sweep straight across the square, spending only a brief period of time there. In other… Continue reading New ‘Superdiffusion’ Proof Probes the Mysterious Math of Turbulence

February 6, 2025 3 min read Trump’s DEI Purge Comes at a Cost to Indigenous Communities President Donald Trump’s purge of diversity initiatives has affected both federal agencies and the institutions they fund, including those that work with Indigenous communities By Chelsea Harvey & E&E News U.S. President Donald Trump speaks while signing executive orders… Continue reading Trump’s DEI Purge Comes at a Cost to Indigenous Communities

To find out if KIBRA and PKMζ work together in response to synaptic activity, the researchers used a technique that makes interacting proteins glow. When they applied electrical pulses to hippocampal slices, glowing dots of evidence appeared: Following bursts of synaptic activity that produced long-term synaptic strengthening, a multitude of KIBRA-PKMζ complexes formed, and they… Continue reading The Molecular Bond That Helps Secure Your Memories

A stain drying on the counter. A raindrop splashing onto the sidewalk. A pile of gravel settling. Historically, such phenomena have rarely caught the attention of physicists, as they seem mundane and devoid of fundamental significance. At the same time, these everyday happenings are also deceptively hard to understand. Out of balance and disordered, they… Continue reading Finding Beauty and Truth in Mundane Occurrences

[CLIP: Theme music] Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. We’re 18 days into the second Trump administration, and when it comes to the president’s impact on health and science, things have been pretty chaotic. There’s been sweeping confusion around a plan to freeze federal funding, much of health agencies’ communications with… Continue reading What Do the Next Four Years Hold for U.S. Science and Health Agencies?

Here’s a scary scenario: You’ve been put in charge of air traffic control at Newark airport near New York. You need to make sure every plane can taxi between the runway and its gate without hitting any other planes. Let’s bring the power of mathematics to bear on your problem. First, create a big, abstract… Continue reading The Fastest Way Yet to Color Graphs

You’ve no doubt seen this kind of news headline: “Astronomers Say Space Rock May Hit Earth in the Not-Too-Distant Future!” We usually get such warnings about one or two objects every year; the latest iteration concerns an asteroid, 2024 YR4, that is estimated to be more than 50 meters wide. For a while there was… Continue reading How Can We Know If an Asteroid Will Hit Earth?

When Mario Krenn was studying quantum physics at the University of Vienna, he was trained in a particular way of designing new experiments: “You go to a blackboard, and you think very hard,” he said. In 2014, Krenn was trying to come up with a way to observe a particular quantum state. A typical setup… Continue reading What Happens When AI Starts To Ask the Questions?