Category: Quantum Stuff

In the late afternoon of May 5, SpaceX’s Elon Musk tweeted, “Starship landing nominal!” Musk is not known for understatement. But seeing that stainless steel behemoth soar was, for many, something more like phenomenal. Over 5 million people watched the spectacle on YouTube, perhaps many with bated breath, as every prior attempt at landing Starship… Continue reading The Profound Potential of Elon Musk’s New Rocket – Issue 100: Outsiders

If you’ve ever taken an algebra or physics class, then you’ve met a parabola, the simple curve that can model how a ball flies through the air. The most important part of a parabola is the vertex — its highest or lowest point — and there are many mathematical techniques for finding it. You can… Continue reading The Simple Math Behind the Mighty Roots of Unity

This spring, at a meeting of Syracuse University’s quark physics group, Ivan Polyakov announced that he had uncovered the fingerprints of a semi-mythical particle. “We said, ‘This is impossible. What mistake are you making?’” recalled Sheldon Stone, the group’s leader. Polyakov went away and double-checked his analysis of data from the Large Hadron Collider beauty… Continue reading ‘Impossible’ Particle Discovery Adds Key Piece to the Strong Force Puzzle

In the 21st century, neuroscience has been able to extend our understanding of the brain beyond brain anatomy to an increasingly functional view of cognition. Every year brings new insights on memory and imagination, and reveals often surprising areas of convergence with fields such as anthropology and philosophy. Yet it was a Cambridge professor of… Continue reading The English Professor Who Foresaw Modern Neuroscience – Issue 100: Outsiders

A few years ago, Time magazine published an article titled, “Cell-Phone Distracted Parenting Can Have Long Term Consequences.”1 It reported research supposedly showing that “distracted parental attention” could hurt infant development, and especially a baby’s ability to feel pleasure later on. What exactly did this research study? Did it directly measure parental cell phone usage… Continue reading Science Isn’t Here for Your Mommy Shaming – Issue 100: Outsiders

When Ilya Metchnikoff was 8 and running around on his parents’ Panassovka estate in Little Russia, now Ukraine, he was making notes on the local flora like a junior botanist. He gave science lectures to his older brothers and local kids whose attendance he assured by paying them from his pocket money. Metchnikoff earned the… Continue reading The Man Who Drank Cholera and Launched the Yogurt Craze – Issue 100: Outsiders

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