Quanta Magazine

Disorder Drives One of Nature’s Most Complex Machines | Quanta Magazine Every second, hundreds to thousands of molecules move through thousands of nuclear pores in each of your cells. A new high-definition view reveals the machine in action.

Each pore into the nucleus is guarded by a jumble of proteins. These bouncers work together to determine which VIPs are allowed into the most exclusive organelle of the cell.

Is Gravity Just Entropy Rising? Long-Shot Idea Gets Another Look. | Quanta Magazine A new argument explores how the growth of disorder could cause massive objects to move toward one another. Physicists are both interested and skeptical.

What if gravity isn’t a pull from mass, but a push from entropy? George Musser reports on the latest version of an old idea.

Meet the ultimate gatekeeper of the nucleus. This molecular machine determines what compounds are welcome inside and which shall not pass. The mechanism behind its selectivity remains a mystery. www.quantamagazine.org/disorder-dri...

First Map Made of a Solid’s Secret Quantum Geometry | Quanta Magazine Physicists recently mapped the hidden shape that underlies the quantum behaviors of a crystal, using a new method that’s expected to become ubiquitous.

Physicists mapped the hidden geometry that underlies the quantum behaviors of a crystal, using a method that’s expected to become ubiquitous.

Can the Most Abstract Math Make the World a Better Place? | Quanta Magazine Columnist Natalie Wolchover explores whether applied category theory can be “green” math.

John Baez wants to wrangle one of the most abstract branches of math to better model the natural world. It sounds like a pipe dream. But is it? Read the latest Qualia column:

Disorder Drives One of Nature’s Most Complex Machines | Quanta Magazine Every second, hundreds to thousands of molecules move through thousands of nuclear pores in each of your cells. A new high-definition view reveals the machine in action.

Behold the inner channel of the nuclear pore complex in all its messy glory. New high-def microscopy is revealing its intricacies like never before. @yaseminsaplakoglu.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/disorder-dri...

The Biggest Project in Modern Mathematics In a 1967 letter to the number theorist André Weil, a 30-year-old mathematician named Robert Langlands outlined striking conjectures that predicted a correspondence between two objects from…

A vast construction project is underway to bridge disparate fields of mathematics. Learn about the incredible Langlands program in our video explainer:

What Crystals Older Than the Sun Reveal About the Start of the Solar System | Quanta Magazine Microscopic crystals extracted from meteorites could help settle a debate about the birth of our patch of the Milky Way.

For decades, scientists believed that a supernova was both the source of the chemicals they were finding in meteorites, and the cosmic trigger for the birth of the solar system. But new studies have led researchers to question that idea.

Can the Most Abstract Math Make the World a Better Place? | Quanta Magazine Columnist Natalie Wolchover explores whether applied category theory can be “green” math.

The relatively new field of applied category theory is already helping model disease and support AI safety. Can it help change our view of the planet, too?

How Much Energy Does It Take To Think? | Quanta Magazine Studies of neural metabolism reveal our brain’s effort to keep us alive and the evolutionary constraints that sculpted our most complex organ.

You’ve just gotten home from an exhausting day. All you want to do is put your feet up and zone out to whatever is on television. Though the inactivity may feel like a well-earned rest, your brain is not just chilling.

What Crystals Older Than the Sun Reveal About the Start of the Solar System | Quanta Magazine Microscopic crystals extracted from meteorites could help settle a debate about the birth of our patch of the Milky Way.

In 1969, a fireball appeared over Mexico. The Allende meteorite spread its debris over more than 500 square kilometers. Its chemical contents surprised scientists: It seemed to suggest that a nearby supernova triggered the formation of our solar system.

New Strides Made on Deceptively Simple ‘Lonely Runner’ Problem | Quanta Magazine A straightforward conjecture about runners moving around a track turns out to be equivalent to many complex mathematical questions. Three new proofs mark the first significant progress on the problem ...

As runners move around a track, are they bound to end up “lonely”? Three new proofs suggest the answer is yes — the first significant progress on the problem in decades.
www.quantamagazine.org/new-strides-...

Can the Most Abstract Math Make the World a Better Place? | Quanta Magazine Columnist Natalie Wolchover explores whether applied category theory can be “green” math.

How can the most abstract mathematics help us make sense of the messiest corners of our reality?

“No one shall expel us from the paradise that Cantor has created for us,” said the great mathematician David Hilbert about Georg Cantor’s proof that infinity comes in many sizes. Explore Cantor’s paradise in this visual explainer: www.quantamagazine.org/how-can-infi...

What Crystals Older Than the Sun Reveal About the Start of the Solar System | Quanta Magazine Microscopic crystals extracted from meteorites could help settle a debate about the birth of our patch of the Milky Way.

Usually locked in a safe on cosmochemist Nan Liu’s desk is a shard of meteorite flecked with material older than the sun. By studying its chemical contents, she’s gleaning insight into how our solar system came to be.

Since she was in graduate school, Laura Monk has been developing mathematical theories that Maryam Mirzakhani didn’t have a chance to finish before her death. Monk feels she’s gotten to know the mathematician through her proofs. www.quantamagazine.org/years-after-...

Can the Most Abstract Math Make the World a Better Place? | Quanta Magazine Columnist Natalie Wolchover explores whether applied category theory can be “green” math.

Qualia essays go where curiosity leads. This week, join @nattyover.bsky.social on her quest to understand whether a burgeoning, abstract mathematical field can help the planet. www.quantamagazine.org/can-the-most...

What Crystals Older Than the Sun Reveal About the Start of the Solar System | Quanta Magazine Microscopic crystals extracted from meteorites could help settle a debate about the birth of our patch of the Milky Way.

New evidence suggests our sun may have formed around a huge, luminous type of star called a Wolf-Rayet star. The bubble that surrounds such a star, like the Dolphin Head Nebula shown here, contains enough material to build a solar system like our own.

How We Came To Know Earth | Quanta Magazine Climate science is the most significant scientific collaboration in history. This series from Quanta Magazine guides you through basic climate science — from quantum effects to ancient hothouses, from...

Explore our series, “How We Came To Know Earth”
www.quantamagazine.org/how-we-came-...

We’re honored to be nominated for two awards from the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) , for General Excellence in the Literature, Science, and Politics category and Best News and Information Design for our special issue on climate. asme.memberclicks.net/national-mag...

Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex | Quanta Magazine A new suggestion that complexity increases over time, not just in living organisms but in the nonliving world, promises to rewrite notions of time and evolution.

Researchers are proposing nothing less than a new law of nature.

How many lines lie on a cubic surface? (The answer is 27.) A statement that’s been known for nearly 180 years has recently gained fresh nuance and relevance. www.quantamagazine.org/new-math-rev...

“In biology, breaking isn’t always a failure,” said the developmental biologist Rashmi Priya (right). “It’s often a necessary step in building something new.”

www.quantamagazine.org/break-it-to-...

What Crystals Older Than the Sun Reveal About the Start of the Solar System | Quanta Magazine Microscopic crystals extracted from meteorites could help settle a debate about the birth of our patch of the Milky Way.

How was our patch of the Milky Way born? Microscopic grains older than the sun are providing clues. @jamesdinneen.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/what-crystal...

What if the inside of black holes are a roiling sea of space and time stretching and compressing in multiple directions? www.quantamagazine.org/new-maps-of-...

As a mouse blastocyst forms, tiny bubbles pry cells apart, creating a hollow space for the fetus to grow inside. www.quantamagazine.org/break-it-to-...

The Man Who Stole Infinity | Quanta Magazine In an 1874 paper, Georg Cantor proved that there are different sizes of infinity and changed math forever. A trove of newly unearthed letters shows that it was also an act of plagiarism.

Infinity has Georg Cantor. But it’s not as simple as that.
www.quantamagazine.org/the-man-who-...

We’re used to tidy narratives of discovery. “Every branch of science needs a hero,” said historian José Ferreirós. “Chemistry has Lavoisier, mechanics has Newton, relativity has Einstein. There’s always this one, only one. But that’s always a lie.”

As we age, the delicate equilibrium of our billions of neurons can teeter — sometimes with serious cognitive consequences. But new research into neuronal regulators is helping us better understand how to re-level things once the scale has been tipped. www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-brai...

Break It To Make It: How Fracturing Sculpts Tissues and Organs | Quanta Magazine Growing tissues can crack, break, and dissociate to form structures that can later withstand immense forces.

Sometimes, the only way to build back up is to let everything fall apart. This is certainly true at the cellular level. www.quantamagazine.org/break-it-to-...