This Physicist Escaped Stephen Hawking’s Black Hole Paradox

Math and Science News from Quanta Magazine View this email in your browser Q&A | ALL TOPICS   This Physicist Discovered an Escape From Hawking's Black Hole Paradox By NATALIE WOLCHOVER The five-decade-old paradox — long thought to be a key to linking quantum theory with Einstein's theory of gravity — is falling to a new generation of thinkers. Netta Engelhardt is leading the way. Read the interview NEUROSCIENCE   The Brain Doesn't Think the Way You Think It Does By JORDANA CEPELEWICZ Familiar categories of mental functions such as perception, memory and attention reflect our experience of ourselves, but they are misleading about how the brain works. More revealing approaches are emerging. Read the article Related:  To Pay Attention, the Brain Uses Filters, Not a Spotlight by Jordana Cepelewicz (2019) EXPLAINERS   Banach-Tarski and the Paradox of Infinite Cloning By MAX G. LEVY In 1924, the mathematicians Stefan Banach and Alfred Tarski found a way to use the nature of infinity to split a solid three-dimensional ball into pieces that recombine to form two identical copies of the original. Read the explainer Related:  How Many Numbers Exist? Infinity Proof Moves Math Closer to an Answer. by Natalie Wolchover INSIGHTS PUZZLE   Math Can, in Theory, Help You Escape a Hungry Bear By PRADEEP MUTALIK Our readers used their geometry skills to survive a dangerous puzzle. Read the puzzle solution Related:  Can Math Help You Escape a Hungry Bear? by Pradeep Mutalik Around the Web Is This the Right Number? Westerners tend to orient number lines with bigger numbers further to the right. But for at least one culture, sizes can increase in any direction, Sujata Gupta reports for Science News. The way in which humans associate numbers and other abstractions with places could reflect processes in the hippocampus, where a grid system arrays our memories and more, Jordana Cepelewicz reported for Quanta in 2019. Singularity Rarity Most physicists believe that singularities always appear hidden inside black holes, but proof remains elusive even after decades of effort, Brendan Foster writes for Scientific American. Physicists have guessed at why the cosmos hides singularities. One possibility is that the "snags" in spacetime might always be cloaked because gravity is so weak, Natalie Wolchover reported for Quanta in 2017.  Follow Quanta Simons Foundation 160 5th Avenue, 7th Floor New York, NY 10010 Unsubscribe | About Quanta Privacy Policy | Terms | Contact Us   Copyright © 2021 Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent division of the Simons Foundation