Quanta
Articles republished from Quanta Magazine
Giant, Mysterious Blobs Are Lurking at the Edge of Earth’s Core
Some seismologists think two massive anomalies under Africa and the Pacific are made of ancient, smoldering rock.
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Maciej Rebisz Three Physicists Stumbled Upon a Striking Mathematical Discovery
Describing neutrino oscillations is notoriously tricky. The search for a shortcut led to unexpected places.
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Google / Reuters Why Two Tech Giants Are Arguing About Quantum Computers
Google says it has reached a major computational milestone. IBM says not so fast.
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Jason Lyon / Quanta What a New Theory of Attention Says About Consciousness
Filtering out distractions might be more important for the brain than highlighting important information.
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Olena Shamlhalo / Quanta Rumors Are Swirling Around a Black-Hole Discovery
The object might be as massive as 100 suns—if it even exists.
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Patryk Hardziej / Quanta Magazine The Dispute at the Heart of Cosmology
The universe is expanding, but no one can agree on exactly how fast.
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Ricardo Bessa / Quanta Biological Clocks Could Drive the Immune System
New research suggests parasites and viruses may organize their life cycles around a host’s circadian rhythms, and even disrupt them to gain an edge.
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Lucy Reading-Ikkanda / Quanta Magazine Rewards Warp the Brain’s Inner GPS
Cells that control an animal’s spatial awareness can reorient themselves to favor locations that are full of food.
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P van Dokkum / NASA / AP Moving Stars Might Speed the Spread of Alien Life
Intelligent planet-hoppers could populate a galaxy in as little as 650,000 years.
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Todd Bretl Underwater Photography The Glowing Squid That Illuminates the Strangeness of Nature
The world is full of unexpected relationships.
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Alexandre Tamisier / Quanta A Hexagonal Theory of Memory
The same neural system could map both the physical and conceptual worlds.
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Simon Gingins / Courtesy of Quanta A Classic Test of Animals’ Minds Has a Fish Problem
An intelligent fish has stirred up a debate about how to measure self-awareness among animals—and what self-awareness even is in the first place.
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wavegrower What Keeps Black Holes From Expanding Everywhere?
Black holes are somehow able to grow constantly without changing their size. Physics might finally be able to explain why.
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Boris Vaudran A Break in the Quest for the Quantum Speed Limit
“When you see that, you know you’re touching on something very, very deep and fundamental.”
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Julia Gunther / Olena Shmahalo / Quanta Magazine There May Be More Worlds With Water Than We Think
H2O is older than the sun, and could play a key role in helping planets grow.
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Niels Busch / Quanta Magazine An Experimental Boost for Quantum Weirdness
After a century of debate, an alternative theory that favored classical reality has finally met its ruin.
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Thibault Camus / AP Trees Could Change the Climate More Than Scientists Thought
A growing body of research suggests that models of the warming world have underestimated a crucial ingredient: vegetation.
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Ognen Teofilovski / Reuters Do or Die for the Leading Big Bang Theory
A new analysis could put the question of cosmic expansion to rest once and for all.
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Rune Fisker / Quanta Magazine When Shadows Are Not What They Seem
By picking up on patterns too subtle for humans to notice, non-line-of-sight imaging can see around corners and through walls.
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Maciej Rebisz / Quanta Magazine The Universe as We Understand It May Be Impossible
A new conjecture in physics challenges the leading “theory of everything.”
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NASA / JPL–Caltech / GSFC / JAXA Astronomers Can’t Decide What the Sun Is Made Of
The concentration of metals in our star will determine when it dies, but scientists struggle to settle on an estimate.
