Today in Science: Master of chaos wins math prize

The $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Math goes to Frank Merle ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­

April 20, 2026—Freshwater mussels are important and disappearing. Plus, mathematician Frank Merle wins the Breakthrough Prize, and look out for the Lyrid meteor shower.  —Andrea Gawrylewski Chief Newsletter Editor MOON MISSION Frank Merle. IHES/Christophe Peus Mathematician Frank Merle, who studies nonliner equations—"blowups" in the equations describing lasers, fluids and quantum mechanics—won the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics. | 5 min read A magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck off the coast of Japan today and set off tsunami warnings. There's now a chance for a "megaquake" in the coming days. | 3 min read Military strategists use game theory to evaluate possible scenarios in war—but there are limits to what this approach to decision-making can achieve, and here's what it means when it comes to nuclear war. | 5 min read A Renaissance-era dispute over how to divvy up the pot in an interrupted game of chance led early mathematicians to invent modern risk assessment. | 7 min read The Lyrid meteor shower will peak tomorrow and Wednesday. Here's how to see it best. | 2 min read Recently uncovered damage to walls in Pompeii displays patterns that may have been made by an ancient “machine gun” called a polybolos. | 2 min read NASA turned off one of the three remaining operational instruments on Voyager I last Friday to save power and keep the spacecraft going. | 2 min read Salmon on cocaine swim a lot more, according to an experiment testing how chemicals in the water (and there are a lot) affect wildlife. | 2 min read More News Supporting our work means amplifying science. Back independent science journalism with a subscription to Scientific American. Thank you! TOP STORIES Wavy-rayed lampmussel (left) and Eastern lampmussel (right). blickwinkel/Alamy (left); LaSalle-Photo/Getty Images (right) Vanishing Mussels Marine mussels are the kind many people like to eat. Freshwater mussels are the kind most people don’t even know exist. But freshwater mussels are the unsung beauties of the shellfish world. On the European continent, there are about 16 species, but in North America there are about 300! Since the 1970s, many North American freshwater mussel populations have been winking out of existence. Scientists have predicted that about a tenth of them have already gone extinct, with the remaining third endangered or threatened. Although scientists have some guesses, the question remains: Why? Ghosts of mussels past: Freshwater mussels once had direct economic value because they were eaten by Native Americans. European colonists never developed a taste for them, but they became a widely used material (in the billions) for buttons until plastic became available. The creatures also keep water clean: one calculation showed that the mussels in one 300-mile stretch of the Upper Mississippi filter more than 14 billion gallons of water a day, about 75 times as much as the Minneapolis–Saint Paul sewage-treatment plant. Were they not disappearing at the current rate, scientists say all rivers in the East would be much clearer. Where they went: Sure, the button makers took a lot of mussels, but what really did them in might have been dams. The 20th-century boom in dam building led to the destruction of hundreds of miles of habitat. But dam building has essentially ceased since the 1980s, and the Clean Water Act has led to other habitat improvements. Now, scientists are wondering if an invasive neighbor of many freshwater mussel species—Asian clams—are causing the continuing decline. The rescuers: Exactly how or why the invaders are driving the decline of the mussels is still a mystery. In the meantime, conservationists are working to improve critically endangered freshwater mussel numbers in their local areas. Paul Johnson, a program supervisor at the Alabama Aquatic Biodiversity Center, has been hatching mussels and safely releasing them back into streams. “Paul is an effing hero,” says Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group. —Emma Gometz, newsletter editor

MONDAY MATH PUZZLE Divide this grid into four identical, nonoverlapping shapes along the square boundaries. Each shape must contain two of the same letters. Click here for the solution. If you want more puzzles like these, sign up for our math newsletter Proof Positive. You'll get a fresh, challenging math puzzle every Tuesday. WHAT WE'RE READING Tinder, Zoom and other companies will offer "proof of humanity" eye scans to combat AI-generated content. | BBC A 3D model and simulation could show why an airplane and fire truck collided at LaGuardia in March. | The New York Times About 1,000 animal welfare protesters tried to storm a beagle breeding and research facility in Wisconsin. | AP My colleague Joe Howlett had a fascinating conversation with this year's winner of the Breakthrough Prize for Math, Frank Merle. Merle uses nonlinear equations to describe systems that appear on the surface to be pure chaos (with fluids, lasers or quantum mechanics). His work transforms the complex into calculable through math. "The equation you discover at the end can be even simpler than you think," he tells Joe. "There’s a simplicity that’s very hidden, very difficult to see even by experiment, but it appears. There’s a little bit of magic in that."    How are you liking this newsletter? Click below to submit your response. You can also email me directly: newsletters@sciam.com. See you tomorrow!   —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor

Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters here. Scientific American One New York Plaza, New York, NY, 10004 ​ Support our mission, subscribe to Scientific American here ​ Unsubscribe    Preferences     View in Browser