Plus: Dark matter magnifies monster stars; The mind's memory storage strategy; How our tongue and hands interact; The Quanta Science Podcast

Math and Science News from Quanta Magazine View this email in your browser Q&A | ALL TOPICS   Why Mathematical Proof Is a Social Compact By JORDANA CEPELEWICZ Number theorist Andrew Granville on what mathematics really is — and why objectivity is never quite within reach. Read the article   DARK MATTER   In a Monster Star's Light, a Hint of Darkness By JOSHUA SOKOL Astronomers are scouring the cosmos for fingerprints of the invisible — tiny clumps of pure dark matter that might solve a long-standing cosmic mystery. Read the article Related:  A New Tool for Finding Dark Matter Digs Up Nothing By Thomas Lewton (2022) MEMORY   The Usefulness of a Memory Guides Where the Brain Saves It By SAUGAT BOLAKHE Memories useful for future generalizations may be held in the brain separately from those recording unusual events. Read the article Related:  Memories Help Brains Recognize New Events Worth Remembering By Yasemin Saplakoglu QUANTIZED COLUMNS   The Hidden Brain Connections Between Our Hands and Tongues By R. DOUGLAS FIELDS Sticking out your tongue while doing delicate work with your hands reveals a history of evolutionary relationships. Read the article  Related:  Why the Brain's Connections to the Body Are Crisscrossed By R. Douglas Fields QUANTA SCIENCE PODCAST   Global Microbiome Study Gives New View of Shared Health Risks Article by YASEMIN SAPLAKOGLU; Podcast hosted by SUSAN VALOT The most comprehensive survey of how we share our microbiomes suggests a new way of thinking about the risks of developing some diseases that aren't usually considered contagious. Listen to the podcast Read the article Around the Web A Cloudy Quantum Forecast Atoms are often pictured as clusters of electrons whizzing through empty space around a dense nucleus. But that picture is not quantum enough, writes Mario Barbatti for Aeon. In reality, matter is made of "continuous quantum clouds." Inside the nucleus are protons and neutrons — the interior of which Barbatti calls "the most complex place in the universe." Dive into this complicated core with a graphical exploration of the center of a proton by Charlie Wood and Merrill Sherman of Quanta. Developing Vaccines Quickly For the last 40 years, the Mexican virologist Susana López Charretón has been piecing together precisely how rotaviruses invade human cells. Her work has led to life-saving vaccines, writes Inés Gutiérrez Jaber in a Science News profile of López Charretón. López Charretón sequenced the Covid-19 strains circulating in Mexico at the pandemic's height. Such efforts to determine the genetic sequences of strains around the world were crucial to deploying vaccines quickly, Anna Durbin told Steven Strogatz on Quanta's The Joy of Why podcast in April. Follow Quanta Unsubscribe | About Quanta | My Bookmarks Privacy Policy | Terms | Contact Us   Copyright © 2023 Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent division of the Simons Foundation Simons Foundation 160 5th Avenue, 7th Floor New York, NY 10010