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2 months 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.
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Nov 25, 2024 | 
technewstube.com | Matt von Hippel
Tech News Tube is a real time news feed of the latest technology news headlines.Follow all of the top tech sites in one place, on the web or your mobile device.
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Nov 1, 2024 | 
quantamagazine.org | Jordana Cepelewicz |Erica Klarreich |Matt von Hippel
Introduction Much of mathematics is driven by intuition, by a deep-rooted sense of what should be true. But sometimes instinct can lead a mathematician astray. Early evidence might not represent the bigger picture; a statement might seem obvious, only for some hidden subtlety to reveal itself. Unexpectedly, three mathematicians have now shown that a well-known hypothesis in probability theory called the bunkbed conjecture falls into this category.
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Oct 21, 2024 | 
quantamagazine.org | Jordana Cepelewicz |Erica Klarreich |Matt von Hippel
Introduction One afternoon in January 2011, Hussein Mourtada leapt onto his desk and started dancing. He wasn’t alone: Some of the graduate students who shared his Paris office were there, too. But he didn’t care. The mathematician realized that he could finally confirm a sneaking suspicion he’d first had while writing his doctoral dissertation, which he’d finished a few months earlier.
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Oct 14, 2024 | 
quantamagazine.org | Erica Klarreich |Matt von Hippel |Gregory Barber |Leila Sloman
A new proof about prime numbers illuminates the subtle relationship between addition and multiplication — and raises hopes for progress on the famous abc conjecture. Introduction One morning last November, the mathematician Hector Pasten finally solved the problem that had been dogging him for more than a decade by using a time-tested productivity hack: procrastination.
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Oct 2, 2024 | 
quantamagazine.org | Matt von Hippel |Gregory Barber |Leila Sloman |Erica Klarreich
Introduction Data is almost always incomplete. Patients drop out of clinical trials and survey respondents skip questions; schools fail to report scores, and governments ignore elements of their economies. When data goes missing, standard statistical tools, like taking averages, are no longer useful. “We cannot calculate with missing data, just as we can’t divide by zero,” said Stef van Buuren, the professor of statistical analysis of incomplete data at the University of Utrecht.
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Aug 18, 2024 | 
technewstube.com | Matt von Hippel
Tech News Tube is a real time news feed of the latest technology news headlines.Follow all of the top tech sites in one place, on the web or your mobile device.
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Aug 18, 2024 | 
wired.com | Matt von Hippel
Vacuum decay, a process that could end the universe as we know it, may happen 10,000 times sooner than expected. Fortunately, it still won’t happen for a very, very long time. When physicists speak of “the vacuum,” the term sounds as though it refers to empty space, and in a sense it does. More specifically, it refers to a set of defaults, like settings on a control board. When the quantum fields that permeate space sit at these default values, you consider space to be empty.
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Aug 5, 2024 | 
quantamagazine.org | Leila Sloman |Matt von Hippel |Gregory Barber
Introduction In late 2017, Ashwin Sah and Mehtaab Sawhney met as undergraduates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since then, the pair have written a mind-boggling 57 math proofs together, many of them profound advances in various fields. In February, Sah and Sawhney announced yet another joint accomplishment.
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Jul 22, 2024 | 
quantamagazine.org | Matt von Hippel
IntroductionVacuum decay, a process that could end the universe as we know it, may happen 10,000 times sooner than expected. Fortunately, it still won’t happen for a very, very long time. When physicists speak of “the vacuum,” the term sounds as though it refers to empty space, and in a sense it does. More specifically, it refers to a set of defaults, like settings on a control board. When the quantum fields that permeate space sit at these default values, you consider space to be empty.
