Illuminating math and science. Supported by @SimonsFdn. 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting.
Joined October 2012
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In the 60s, an eccentric behavioral psychologist named James McConnell pureed a bunch of worms and fed them to other worms. For years after, he claimed that the cannibal worms learned the ground-up worms’ memories. Could he have been… right?
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Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago. Through geologic fire and brimstone, much about its earliest eon has been lost to history, but the basics are agreed upon: It began as a ball of mostly molten rock. It became a blue marble. How?
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In Plato’s cave, prisoners see the world only through shadows. Extending this metaphor to AI, the shadows are streams of data, and AI models are the prisoners. Perhaps they are creating one self-consistent representation of reality using disparate chunks of information.
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In her Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1983, the octogenarian geneticist Barbara McClintock asked the question, “What does a cell know of itself?” Forty years later, scientists are realizing that the answer might be: Much more than we thought.
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In the early 2010s, Jennifer Doudna co-developed CRISPR, which fundamentally altered the world of gene editing as we know it. While it offers vast potential, it also comes with significant ethical pitfalls. Tune in to “The Joy of Why":
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We know how photosynthesis works in incredible molecular detail, but how this vital process evolved is far less clear. It seems the road to photosynthesis was far longer and stranger than anyone expected.
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A collaborative math project, started by Terence Tao, showed that mathematics could be conducted experimentally, and worked on by large groups of mathematicians at once. In doing so, it turned up something genuinely new.
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CRISPR is being used in everything from developing treatments to engineering drought-resistant crops. In the new “The Joy of Why” episode, CRISPR co-developer Jennifer Doudna explains its extraordinary origins and how its gene-editing power was discovered.
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Fireflies “have been doing computer science well before we even existed.” — Andrew Moiseff, a biologist at the University of Connecticut quantamagazine.org/how-do-fi…
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What a father eats, drinks, inhales, is stressed by or otherwise experiences in the weeks and months before he conceives a child might be encoded in molecules, packaged into his sperm cells and transmitted to his future kid. quantamagazine.org/how-dads-…
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Plants and cyanobacteria use antenna complexes to collect sunlight for photosynthesis. A lineage that branched off 2 billion years ago has an antenna shaped like a paddle, which is worse at gathering photons than the more modern fan shape.
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For decades, NASA’s exploration of the solar system has been dominated by the search for water, because as far as we know, water is essential for life. So it may come as a surprise that scientists don’t really know how water first arrived here on Earth.
quantamagazine.org/where-did…
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Jun 11
Terence Tao doesn’t think AI will replace human mathematicians anytime soon, but he does consider it well suited to helping solve certain types of complex mathematical problems: ones that can be broken into thousands of small, manageable subproblems.
quantamagazine.org/how-terry…
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Hugh Woodin has an audacious plan to map 𝘝, the entire mathematical universe. quantamagazine.org/is-mathem…
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Set theory deals with the infinite, computer science with the finite. Set theorists use the language of logic, computer scientists the language of algorithms. Now, a mathematical bridge connects these two fields. quantamagazine.org/a-new-bri…
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The evolutionary invention of photosynthesis rewrote the rules of life on Earth. A strange cyanobacterium is helping scientists uncover how the staggeringly complex light-capture process could have possibly evolved.
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“The Joy of Why” is back. In our first episode of the new season, pioneering biochemist Jennifer Doudna talks about how her early, “rebellious,” decision to study RNA led her to a Nobel Prize. Tune in:
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Lean is software that allows mathematical proofs to be written and checked as computer code. Mathematician Terence Tao uses it as a part of his collaborative approach to solving complex mathematical problems.
quantamagazine.org/how-terry…
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The central equation of quantum mechanics features the imaginary number i. Erwin Schrödinger considered it a major eyesore. Now, physicists have figured out how to do away with it. quantamagazine.org/physicist…
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“Inside of black holes, I am positive there is some notion of singularity.” —Netta Engelhardt, physicist quantamagazine.org/singulari…
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Darwin’s finches may be different “ecotypes” that express a variety of genetic memories, allowing them to adapt quickly to new food sources.
Tune in to The Quanta Podcast:
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
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