How cells navigate; Math and music; Fluctuation relations; The young, dim sun

Math and Science News from Quanta Magazine View this email in your browser QUANTUM PHYSICS | ALL TOPICS   Massive Black Holes Shown to Act Like Quantum Particles By CHARLIE WOOD Physicists are using quantum math to understand what happens when black holes collide. In a surprise, they've shown that a single particle can describe a collision's entire gravitational wave. Read the article DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY   Cells Blaze Their Own Trails to Navigate Through the Body By ELENA RENKEN With self-generated gradients of chemicals and physical tension, cells in the body steer themselves to vital destinations. Read the article Related:  The Math That Tells Cells What They Are by Jordana Cepelewicz (2019) Q&A   In Music and Math, Lillian Pierce Builds Landscapes By JORDANA CEPELEWICZ Lillian Pierce always had a deep interest in numbers, but to her, a career in mathematics was far from preordained.  Read the interview Related:  Inside the Secret Math Society Known Simply as Nicolas Bourbaki by Kevin Hartnett (2020) QUANTIZED COLUMNS   Beyond the Second Law of Thermodynamics By NICOLE YUNGER HALPERN Thanks to the power of fluctuation relations, physicists are taking the second law of thermodynamics to settings once thought impossible. Read the column Related:  The New Thermodynamic Understanding of Clocks by Natalie Wolchover (2021) QUANTA SCIENCE PODCAST   A Solution to the Faint-Sun Paradox Reveals a Narrow Window for Life Podcast hosted by SUSAN VALOT; Story by JONATHAN O'CALLAGHAN When the sun was 30% dimmer, Earth seems like it should have been inhospitably frozen, but new work suggests that dimness may be why life exists here at all. Listen to the podcast Read the article Around the Web Strengthened Computing Beats the Heat A new computing method called "momentum computing" may be able to reduce the amount of energy lost to heat by making computations reversible, writes Philip Ball for Scientific American. A typical computer works irreversibly because it erases memory to free up storage — increasing the entropy of the system. That insight was the key to resolving the Maxwell's demon paradox, as Jonathan O'Callaghan explained for Quanta in 2021. Waning COVID Vaccine Immunity SARS-CoV-2 is far from exhausting its repertoire of pandemic tricks. Experts write for The New York Times that they expect the virus will continue evolving to evade our immune defenses and that we will need to get regular boosters as for the flu. The scientists reached those conclusions about what the coronavirus would do next in part by analyzing the "fitness landscape" of its potential mutations. Carrie Arnold reported on their work for Quanta in January. Follow Quanta Simons Foundation 160 5th Avenue, 7th Floor New York, NY 10010 Unsubscribe | About Quanta Privacy Policy | Terms | Contact Us   Copyright © 2022 Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent division of the Simons Foundation