James Round for Quanta Magazine
The apparent paradox of the chicken and the egg smells like “turtles all the way down.” This puzzle shows how biology and physics can overcome infinite regress.
Rogue waves — enigmatic giants of the sea — were thought to be caused by two different mechanisms. But a new idea that borrows from the hinterlands of probability theory has the potential to predict them all.
By exploiting randomness, three mathematicians have proved an elegant law that underlies the chaotic motion of turbulent systems.
James P. Allison believed that unleashing the immune system was a way to beat cancer when almost no one else did. A Nobel Prize and a growing list of cancer survivors vindicate him.
By teaching machines to understand our true desires, one scientist hopes to avoid the potentially disastrous consequences of having them do what we command.
As astronomers get better at finding the comets and asteroids of other stars, they’ll learn more about the universe and our place in it.
Collaborations in progress between ethicists and biologists seek to head off challenges raised by lab-grown “organoids” as they become increasingly similar to human brain tissue.
As Scarlett Howard taught honeybees to do arithmetic, they showed her how fundamental numbers might be to all brains.
While mathematics gives us elegant explanations for many physical phenomena, real-world situations often require us to scramble through dense numerical thickets.
During development, cells seem to decode their fate through optimal information processing, which could hint at a more general principle of life.
Quanta Magazine is committed to in-depth, accurate journalism that serves the public interest. Each article braids the complexities of science with the malleable art of storytelling and is meticulously reported, edited and fact-checked. Launched and funded by the Simons Foundation, Quanta is editorially independent — our articles do not reflect or represent the views of the foundation.
