Friday, August 20, 2021

How Big Can the Quantum World Be?

Math and Science News from Quanta Magazine
View this email in your browser
My Bookmarks

QUANTUM PHYSICS | ALL TOPICS

How Big Can the Quantum World Be? Physicists Probe
the Limits.

By PHILIP BALL

By showing that even large objects can exhibit bizarre quantum behaviors, physicists hope to illuminate the mystery of quantum collapse, identify the quantum nature of gravity, and perhaps even make Schrödinger's cat a reality.

Read the article

GRAPH THEORY

 

How Big Data Carried Graph Theory Into New Dimensions

By STEPHEN ORNES

How would you represent peer pressure on a graph with edges and vertices? New tools are emerging to help researchers better model intricate relationships.

Read the article

Related: 
Mathematicians Solve Decades-Old
Classification Problem

by Steve Nadis

EVOLUTION

 

How Do New Organs Evolve? A Beetle Gland Shows the Way.

By VIVIANE CALLIER

The evolution of a defensive gland in beetles shows how organs can arise from novel cells carving out new functional niches for their neighbors.

Read the article

Related: 
Insects Conquered a Watery Realm
With Just Two New Genes

by Vivane Callier (2017)

COMPUTATIONAL COMPLEXITY

 

Computer Scientists Discover Limits of Major Research Algorithm

By NICK THIEME

The most widely used technique for finding the largest or smallest values of a math function turns out to be a fundamentally difficult computational problem.

Read the blog

Related: 
Mathematician Measures
the Repulsive Force Within Polynomials

by Kevin Hartnett (2020)

QUANTA SCIENCE PODCAST

 

Radioactivity May Fuel Life Deep Underground and Inside Other Worlds

Podcast hosted by SUSAN VALOT;
Story by JORDANA CEPELEWICZ

New work suggests that the radiolytic splitting of water supports giant subsurface ecosystems of life on Earth — and could do it elsewhere, too.

Listen to the podcast

Read the article

Around the Web

Skewed Representations
As politicians redraw the voting maps, mathematicians will be watching and analyzing the results with sophisticated new tools, Siobhan Roberts reports for MIT Tech Review. The Supreme Court has ruled against partisan map-drawing — but it hasn't defined what counts as partisanship or how to recognize it. In 2017, Erica Klarreich wrote for Quanta about the mathematicians developing ways to fix that problem.


Fresh Pi
A supercomputer has calculated pi to record accuracy with record speed, The Guardian reports. The last digit crunched — some 62.8 trillion places after the decimal — is a 4. Pi never ends, so even that result is rough. In 2019, mathematicians proved an idea for testing when it's possible to find fractions that approximate irrational numbers, as Kevin Hartnett reported at the time for Quanta.
Follow Quanta
Simons Foundation

160 5th Avenue, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10010

Copyright © 2021 Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent division of the Simons Foundation

Scientist Pankaj

Today in Science: Inside the sun's corona

...