COMBINATORICS | ALL TOPICS

'A-Team' of Math Proves a Critical Link Between Addition and Sets

By LEILA SLOMAN

A team of four prominent mathematicians, including two Fields medalists, proved a conjecture described as a "holy grail of additive combinatorics." Within a month, a loose collaboration verified it with a computer-assisted proof.

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COMPUTATIONAL COMPLEXITY

An Easy-Sounding Problem Yields Numbers Too Big for Our Universe

By BEN BRUBAKER

The reachability problem for vector addition systems can be explained simply to a kindergartner, but it quickly becomes hard to solve. Computer scientists have finally found how complex this problem can get.

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Related:
How the Slowest Computer Programs Illuminate Math's Fundamental Limits
By John Pavlus (2020)

EXPLAINERS

The (Often) Overlooked Experiment That Revealed the Quantum World

By ZACK SAVITSKY

A century ago, the Stern-Gerlach experiment established the truth of quantum mechanics. Now it's being used to probe the clash of quantum theory and gravity.

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Related:
A New Experiment Casts Doubt
on the Leading Theory of the Nucleus
By Katie McCormick

Q&A

She Studies How Addiction Hijacks Learning in the Brain

By YASEMIN SAPLAKOGLU

Erin Calipari works to understand how drugs like opioids and cocaine alter learning circuits and neurochemistry in one of the country's epicenters of substance use disorder and addiction.

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QUANTA SCIENCE PODCAST

Exoplanets Could Help Us Learn How Planets Make Magnetism

By JONATHAN O'CALLAGHAN;
Podcast hosted by SUSAN VALOT

New observations of a faraway rocky world that might have its own magnetic field could help astronomers understand the seemingly haphazard magnetic fields swaddling our solar system's planets.

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