Category: Quantum Stuff

Explore Almost anytime physicists announce that they’ve discovered a new particle, whether it’s the Higgs boson or the recently bagged double-charm tetraquark, what they’ve actually spotted is a small bump rising from an otherwise smooth curve on a plot. Such a bump is the unmistakable signature of “resonance,” one of the most ubiquitous phenomena in… Continue reading How the Physics of Resonance Shapes Reality

Imaginary numbers are not imaginary at all. The truth is, they have had far more impact on our lives than anything truly imaginary ever could. Without imaginary numbers, and the vital role they played in putting electricity into homes, factories, and internet server-farms, the modern world would not exist. Students who might complain to their… Continue reading Imaginary Numbers Are Reality

As Ukrainian researchers have feared for their lives and careers after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, mathematicians have been grappling over what to do about a prominent mathematical conference that was set to be held in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in July. The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is “the largest and most significant conference on pure and… Continue reading Mathematicians Protest Russia Hosting Major Conference

Researchers soon started exploring how to apply this advance to the maximum flow problem. The idea is to imagine our highway network as a network of wires and to turn up the resistance on the highways that don’t have much available capacity, to discourage electrons from running through them. Because of Spielman and Teng, we… Continue reading Researchers Achieve ‘Absurdly Fast’ Algorithm for Network Flow

Think of the dead grandparents and everything they’ll miss. All the milestones, the middle school graduations and bar mitzvahs and quinceañeras. All the victories, on soccer fields or piano recital halls. All the ordinary shared moments, dancing to “Baby Beluga,” or making banana bread, building extravagant Lego towers, watching The Wizard of Oz and cuddling… Continue reading The Devastating Loss of Grandparents among One Million COVID Dead

In May 2020, as the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic chewed through Texas, I went to an Austin nature store and bought several bird feeders. The birds, drawn by seed and suet slabs, came soon afterward. They flitted down from the pecan trees and telephone wires: bold Tufted Titmice, bouncing Northern Cardinals and bullying… Continue reading Bird Feeders Are Good for Some Species—But Possibly Bad for Others

Pebble accretion is now a favored theory for how gas giant cores are made, and many astronomers argue it may be taking place in those ALMA images, allowing giant planets to form in the first few million years after a star is born. But the theory’s relevance to the small, terrestrial planets near the sun… Continue reading Astronomers Reimagine the Making of the Planets

Within a decade, a small rover on Mars will pick up samples of rock left by a previous mission. It will then load them into a rocket secured within a small platform on a flat patch of the planet’s surface. Once the rocket’s hatch has closed, the platform will toss it upward on its side,… Continue reading The First Rocket Launch from Mars Will Start in Midair

Imagine that while you are enjoying your morning bowl of Cheerios, a spider drops from the ceiling and plops into the milk. Years later, you still can’t get near a bowl of cereal without feeling overcome with disgust. Researchers have now directly observed what happens inside a brain learning that kind of emotionally charged response.… Continue reading Scientists Watch a Memory Form in a Living Brain

Last March, Iowa State University mathematicians Leslie Hogben and Carolyn Reinhart received a welcome surprise. Adam Wagner, a postdoctoral fellow at Tel Aviv University, emailed to let them know he’d answered a question they’d published the week before — though not by any of the usual math or brute-force computing techniques. Instead, he used a… Continue reading In New Math Proofs, Artificial Intelligence Plays to Win