Physics News, Interviews and Columns | Quanta Magazine
Quanta’s award-winning coverage of astrophysics, cosmology, quantum physics, geophysics, condensed matter, statistical mechanics, chaos theory…
How Earth’s Climate Changes Naturally (and Why Things Are …
Jul 21, 2020 · Earth’s climate has fluctuated through deep time, pushed by these 10 different causes. Here’s how each compares with modern climate change. Orbital wobbles, plate tectonics, evolutionary changes and other factors have sent the planet in and out of ice ages. Pablo A. Cumillaf. Earth has been a snowball and a hothouse at different times in ...
The Mystery at the Heart of Physics That Only Math Can Solve
Jun 10, 2021 · The accelerating effort to understand the mathematics of quantum field theory will have profound consequences for both math and physics. Olena Shmahalo/Quanta Magazine. Over the past century, quantum field theory has proved to be the single most sweeping and successful physical theory ever invented. It is an umbrella term that encompasses many ...
A New Map of All the Particles and Forces | Quanta Magazine
Oct 22, 2020 · We’ve created a new way to explore the fundamental constituents of the universe. Ashley Mackenzie for Quanta Magazine. [Editor’s note: The full, interactive map is available below.] All of nature springs from a handful of components — the fundamental particles — that interact with one another in only a few different ways.
How the Physics of Resonance Shapes Reality | Quanta Magazine
Jan 26, 2022 · Here’s how the same effect manifests in such varied settings, from everyday life down to the smallest scales. In its simplest form, resonance occurs when an object experiences an oscillating force that’s close to one of its “natural” frequencies, at which it easily oscillates. That objects have natural frequencies “is one of the ...
The Most Famous Paradox in Physics Nears Its End
Oct 29, 2020 · The work appears to resolve a paradox that Stephen Hawking first described five decades ago. Ashley Mackenzie for Quanta Magazine. In a series of breakthrough papers, theoretical physicists have come tantalizingly close to resolving the black hole information paradox that has entranced and bedeviled them for nearly 50 years.
A Mathematician’s Guided Tour Through High Dimensions
Sep 13, 2021 · The formal study of higher dimensions emerged in the 19th century and became quite sophisticated within decades: A 1911 bibliography contained 1,832 references to the geometry of n dimensions. Perhaps as a consequence, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the public became infatuated with the fourth dimension.
Mathematician Proves Huge Result on ‘Dangerous’ Problem
Dec 11, 2019 · Lothar Collatz likely posed the eponymous conjecture in the 1930s. The problem sounds like a party trick. Pick a number, any number. If it’s odd, multiply it by 3 and add 1. If it’s even, divide it by 2. Now you have a new number. Apply the same rules to the new number. The conjecture is about what happens as you keep repeating the process.
Why Are Plants Green? To Reduce the Noise in Photosynthesis.
Jul 30, 2020 · Plants ignore the most energy-rich part of sunlight because stability matters more than efficiency, according to a new model of photosynthesis. Land plants are green because their photosynthetic pigments reflect green light, even though those wavelengths hold the most energy. Scientists finally understand why. Olena Shmahalo/Quanta Magazine.
Why Extraterrestrial Life May Not Seem Entirely Alien
Mar 18, 2021 · Arik Kershenbaum, a zoologist and animal communications researcher at the University of Cambridge, thinks that the evolutionary forces that shape life on Earth will produce many similar features in extraterrestrial life. Luke Wolagiewicz for Quanta Magazine. On the website for the department of zoology of the University of Cambridge, the page ...