Functions called modular forms are useful throughout math and physics, sometimes mysteriously. www.quantamagazine.org/behold-modul...

Mathematicians regularly use rainbow wheels as a reference for illustrating complex functions. This wheel illustrates the function 𝑓(𝑧)=𝑧. www.quantamagazine.org/behold-modul...

It turns out that under just the right conditions some liquids don’t flow — they fracture. www.quantamagazine.org/we-know-simp...

Thamires Lima, a research professor at Drexel University, was using an extensional rheometer when she heard a snap. She thought the machine had broken, but what really happened was stranger: It wasn’t the machine that cracked, but the fluid it was pulling. www.quantamagazine.org/we-know-simp...

Researchers thought that what enabled complex fluids to break apart was their elasticity. But a crack in a nonelastic simple fluid has them questioning that idea. www.quantamagazine.org/we-know-simp...

This cell is not alive. But the lab-made creation is the strongest demonstration yet that it is possible to generate lifelike behavior from nonliving molecules, a goal that synthetic biologists have been chasing for decades. www.quantamagazine.org/for-the-firs...

Scientists have historically believed there’s a hard limit to how fast black holes can grow. But recent computer simulations suggest that black holes might have a back door to grow larger than expected, thanks to something called “super-Eddington” accretion. www.quantamagazine.org/astrophysici...

Chinmay Nirkhe, Mark Zhandry, John Bostanci, and Jonas Haferkamp blended ideas from cryptography, statistical physics, and other far-flung fields to show that quantum proofs are more powerful than classical ones. www.quantamagazine.org/researchers-...

Be resilient like the humble spindle apparatus, a core component of cell division: Get stronger under pressure. www.quantamagazine.org/what-breaks-...

Before the James Webb Space Telescope, these little red dots had never been seen. Now hundreds of them appear in images from the telescope. They’re a cosmic enigma, one that started to appear roughly 650 million years after the Big Bang. www.quantamagazine.org/astrophysici...

The synthetic biologist Kate Adamala coaxed a cellular soup of nonliving biomolecules enclosed in a membrane to act somewhat like a living thing. The synthetic cell even grew and divided into daughter cells. www.quantamagazine.org/for-the-firs...

Sophie Dumont and her team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, are peering into the physics of dividing cells to solve a longstanding mystery at the finest scales of life. www.quantamagazine.org/what-breaks-...

In the cellular world, complex living machines endure physical forces and stresses, much like machines in a factory. How does the spindle, the fibrous “rib cage” driving cell division, manage the strain? www.quantamagazine.org/what-breaks-...

Decades ago, Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős used randomness to illuminate the vast and weird world of networks. Today, mathematicians are making his technique even more powerful. www.quantamagazine.org/after-80-yea...

This is currently the world’s largest neutrino detector. Deep underground in Jiangmen, China, one of JUNO’s main goals is to determine the outstanding mystery of how heavy each flavor of neutrino is. www.quantamagazine.org/how-physicis...

“For many years, Erdős was like a voice in the wilderness,” said New York University mathematician Joel Spencer. “He was getting these amazing results using randomness, and people had never done that before.” www.quantamagazine.org/after-80-yea...

The first solar neutrino was detected here at the Homestake detector in South Dakota. The experiment required a tank one-fifth the volume of an Olympic-size swimming pool filled with chlorine-rich dry-cleaning fluid. www.quantamagazine.org/how-physicis...

A new proof deals an answer: www.quantamagazine.org/seven-perfec...

The asteroid Ryugu, visited by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft in 2018, contained water similar to the most common kind found on Earth. Asteroids are one possible vehicle for water’s arrival on the planet. www.quantamagazine.org/where-did-ea...

Recently, mathematicians figured out how many shuffles it takes to mix up a sloppily cut deck. www.quantamagazine.org/seven-perfec...

We've been getting a little DIY in the office lately... 🧶

Harrison Horn and collaborators built experiments using hydrogen, rock samples, and diamond anvils to test whether hydrogen and oxygen could combine to form water on a type of exoplanet called a sub-Neptune. www.quantamagazine.org/where-did-ea...

When Persi Diaconis was 14 years old, he ran away from home to apprentice with a magician. Ten years later, he went back to school to become a professional mathematician. Today, card tricks play a role in his research. www.quantamagazine.org/seven-perfec...

Plants and cyanobacteria use antenna complexes to collect sunlight for photosynthesis. A lineage that branched off 2 billion years ago has an antenna shaped like a paddle, which is worse at gathering photons than the more modern fan shape. www.quantamagazine.org/an-early-ste...

In her Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1983, the octogenarian geneticist Barbara McClintock asked the question, “What does a cell know of itself?” Forty years later, scientists are realizing that the answer might be: Much more than we thought. www.quantamagazine.org/what-can-a-c...

Fireflies “have been doing computer science well before we even existed.” — Andrew Moiseff, a biologist at the University of Connecticut quantamagazine.org/how-do-firef...

Hugh Woodin has an audacious plan to map 𝘝, the entire mathematical universe. www.quantamagazine.org/is-mathemati...

Lean is software that allows mathematical proofs to be written and checked as computer code. Mathematician Terence Tao uses it as a part of his collaborative approach to solving complex mathematical problems. www.quantamagazine.org/how-terry-ta...

Terence Tao could have built a career without collaboration, but that’s not the way he likes to work. He views working with other researchers as a primary way to discover new ideas — take what you know, pair it with what I know, and see what happens. www.quantamagazine.org/how-terry-ta...

M.C. Escher’s 1959 woodcut Circle Limit III has the geometry of a holographic world: A whole universe fits inside a spherical surface. In holography, you can learn about what’s happening in the interior by studying the surface itself. www.quantamagazine.org/entanglement...