Lyndie Chiou

California

Journalist and Writer at Freelance

Words at QuantaMagazine, New Scientist, NYTimes, SciAm, and more. Caltech/MIT Physics grad. Black/Scottish. She/her. [email protected]

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Articles

Mathematicians Find Proof to 122-Year-Old Triangle-to-Square Puzzle

4 weeks ago | scientificamerican.com | Lyndie Chiou

About a decade ago Tonan Kamata, now a mathematician at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), stood mesmerized in front of a math museum’s origamilike exhibit. It featured a triangular tile cut into four pieces that were connected by tiny hinges. With a simple swivel, the pieces spun around to transform the triangle into a square. The exhibit traces its origin to a mathematical puzzle published in a 1902 newspaper.
Mathematicians Find Proof to 122-Year-Old Triangle-to-Square Puzzle

4 weeks ago | flipboard.com | Lyndie Chiou

3 hours agoWhat’s an email mask? Here’s why tech experts say you should be using oneSafeguard your privacy with a decoy email address. You’ve heard of burner phones. What about burner email? So much of the internet now requires that you hand over your email address before you’re able to use any services—from an app you’ve downloaded to signing up for a newsletter or redeeming a …NowThings Are Bad At Tesla. They’re About To Get Much Worse.
Is Dark Energy Getting Weaker? New Evidence Strengthens the Case.

1 month ago | quantamagazine.org | Charlie Wood |Elise Cutts |Lyndie Chiou

Introduction Last spring, a team of nearly 1,000 cosmologists announced that dark energy — the enigmatic agent propelling the universe to swell in size at an ever-increasing rate — might be slackening. The bombshell result, based on the team’s observations of the motions of millions of galaxies combined with other data, was tentative and preliminary.
The Road Map to Alien Life Passes Through the ‘Cosmic Shoreline’

1 month ago | quantamagazine.org | Elise Cutts |Charlie Wood |Lyndie Chiou |Matt von Hippel

Introduction In the late 1970s, Saturn’s odd moon Titan, a hazy orange world, was expecting visitors — first, NASA’s Pioneer 11 probe, then the twin Voyager spacecraft. Most moons are airless or boast little more than gauzy, gaseous veils. But Titan is cloaked in a blanket of nitrogen and methane so thick that, with a pair of wings and a running start, astronauts on the frosty satellite could fly just by flapping their arms.
Nuclear clock: How the most precise timepiece ever could change our view of the cosmos

Sep 9, 2024 | newscientist.com | Lyndie Chiou

Ekkehard PeikÂ is a clock-maker. But instead of spending his days looking at tiny cogs and springs through a magnifying glass, the tools of his trade are powerful lasers, wires and, occasionally, radioactive atoms. Peik, director of the German metrology institute (PTB), is one of a handful of physicists who have spent the best part of three decades trying to make the most accurate timepiece in the universe.
NASA’s Plans for Next-Generation Mars Helicopters Are Up in the Air

May 8, 2024 | scientificamerican.com | Lyndie Chiou

Almost no empty seats remained in the large auditorium for opening day of the 2024 Transformative Vertical Flight conference devoted to helicopter research. Håvard Grip, a chief engineer at NASA, stood before the waiting crowd of aeromechanical engineers to deliver his presentation on the many triumphs—and the downfall—of Ingenuity, the record-setting helicopter that flew scores of missions on Mars before ultimately crashing in mid-January 2024.
Dogged Dark Matter Hunters Find New Hiding Places to Check | Quanta Magazine

May 7, 2024 | quantamagazine.org | Lyndie Chiou

IntroductionThe end is brutal for electrons hurtling at 99.9999999% of the speed of light through SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory’s two-mile-long beam pipe: a final slam into End Station A. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, such collisions broke apart protons and neutrons to reveal the elementary particles that make them up. The discovery won the experiment’s leader a Nobel Prize. “End Station A is this hallowed ground at SLAC,” said the physicist Timothy Nelson.
Topologists Tackle the Trouble With Poll Placement | Quanta Magazine

Mar 26, 2024 | quantamagazine.org | Lyndie Chiou

IntroductionIn Georgia’s 2020 gubernatorial election, some voters in Atlanta waited over 10 hours to cast a ballot. One reason for the long lines was that almost 10% of Georgia’s polling sites had closed over the preceding seven years, despite an influx of about 2 million voters. These closures were disproportionately concentrated in predominantly Black areas that tended to vote Democratic. But pinpointing the locations of “voting deserts” isn’t as straightforward as it might seem.
Astronomers May Have Witnessed Worlds in Collision

Oct 25, 2023 | scientificamerican.com | Lyndie Chiou |Lee Billings

Long ago, around an otherwise unremarkable faraway star, two infant planets had an extraordinarily bad day. The two collided in a giant impact that brought both to a violent end. Where once these worlds had twirled, the cataclysm left behind only a diminished molten lump and a churning 10-million-kilometer-wide cloud of incandescent vapor and pulverized debris that should eventually condense into a new, second-generation planet.
How (Nearly) Nothing Might Solve Cosmology’s Biggest Questions | Quanta Magazine

Jul 25, 2023 | quantamagazine.org | Lyndie Chiou |Ruth Durrer

By measuring the universe’s emptiest spaces, scientists can study how matter clumps together and how fast it flies apart. IntroductionLike a bright city in the middle of a barren desert, our galactic neighborhood is enveloped by a cosmic void — an enormous, almost unfathomably empty pocket of space. Recently, sky surveys have spotted thousands more of these vacant bubbles.