Meg Duff: For Science, Quickly, I’m Meg Duff. As the world heats up, many of the consequences of burning fossil fuels are now painfully obvious. But there’s also this less intuitive consequence: under our feet, the economy responsible for the growth of trees and forests is experiencing inflation. In case you aren’t familiar, atmospheric carbon… Continue reading The Fungi Economy, Part 2: Here’s How Plants and Fungi Trade beneath Our Feet
Category: Quantum Stuff
15 Million People Are at Risk from Bursting Glacial Lakes
Editor’s Note (8/7/23): This story is being republished after unprecedented levels of flooding from Mendenhall Glacier caused major damage in Juneau, Alaska, over the weekend. At least 15 million people worldwide live in the flood paths of dangerous glacial lakes that can abruptly burst their banks and rush down mountainsides. A study published Tuesday in the journal Nature… Continue reading 15 Million People Are at Risk from Bursting Glacial Lakes
DeSantis’s Florida Approves Climate-Denial Videos in Schools
CLIMATEWIRE | Climate activists are like Nazis. Wind and solar power pollute the Earth and make life miserable. Recent global and local heat records reflect natural temperature cycles. These are some of the themes of children’s videos produced by an influential conservative advocacy group. Now, the videos could soon be used in Florida’s classrooms. Florida’s Department… Continue reading DeSantis’s Florida Approves Climate-Denial Videos in Schools
First Pill for Postpartum Depression Approved
Last Friday the Food and Drug Administration approved the first oral pill specifically targeted to treat postpartum depression—the most common complication of childbirth. The new medication, known as zuranolone, works more quickly than existing antidepressant treatments for postpartum depression and is given once a day for just two weeks. One in seven people who have… Continue reading First Pill for Postpartum Depression Approved
More than Half of Earth’s Species Live Underground
To many humans, soil is just the dirt under our feet. But new research shows that for more than half of all species on Earth, soil is crucial habitat—and an imperiled one at that. “I think soil’s having a moment,” says Mark Anthony, a fungal ecologist at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and… Continue reading More than Half of Earth’s Species Live Underground
The Experimental Cosmologist Hunting for the First Sunrise
Quanta Magazine > 0; if (typeof predicate !== ‘function’) { throw new TypeError(‘predicate must be a function’); } var thisArg = arguments[1]; var k = 0; while (k We care about your data, and we’d like to use cookies to give you a smooth browsing experience. Please agree and read more about our privacy policy.Agree… Continue reading The Experimental Cosmologist Hunting for the First Sunrise
Behold Modular Forms, the ‘Fifth Fundamental Operation’ of Math
Two kinds of transformations copy the fundamental domain to the right and left, as well as to a series of ever-shrinking semicircles along the horizontal axis. These copies fill the entire upper half of the complex plane. A modular form relates the copies to each other in a very particular way. That’s where its symmetries… Continue reading Behold Modular Forms, the ‘Fifth Fundamental Operation’ of Math
Tech Companies’ New Favorite Solution for the AI Content Crisis Isn’t Enough
Thanks to a bevy of easily accessible online tools, just about anyone with a computer can now pump out, with the click of a button, artificial-intelligence-generated images, text, audio and videos that convincingly resemble those created by humans. One big result is an online content crisis, an enormous and growing glut of unchecked, machine-made material… Continue reading Tech Companies’ New Favorite Solution for the AI Content Crisis Isn’t Enough
The 4 Stages of Conspiracy Theory Escalation on Social Media
The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Conspiracy theory beliefs and (more generally) misinformation may be groundless, but they can have a range of harmful real-world consequences, including spreading lies, undermining trust in media and government institutions and inciting violent or even extremist behaviors. For… Continue reading The 4 Stages of Conspiracy Theory Escalation on Social Media
A Tower of Conjectures That Rests Upon a Needle
The next step up in that hierarchy is the “restriction” conjecture. If it is true, so is the Kakeya conjecture. (This also means that if the Kakeya conjecture turns out to be false, the restriction conjecture can’t be true.) The restriction conjecture, in turn, is implied by the so-called Bochner-Riesz conjecture. And at the very… Continue reading A Tower of Conjectures That Rests Upon a Needle