Quanta Magazine

Illuminating math and science. Supported by @SimonsFdn. 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting.

[Quanta Magazine @QuantaMagazine]

Recently, multiple teams of physicists identified how a quantum property known as “magic” makes space-time’s fabric bendy. Charles Cao, one of the researchers, calls it “the fabric softener of space.”
https://t.co/DoLuozu0Lu

[Quanta Magazine @QuantaMagazine]

A team of French biochemists blasted this jar of dirt with sterilizing gamma radiation. For six years after, the soil showed no signs of life, but it continued to consume oxygen and emit carbon dioxide. Why wouldn’t it stop breathing? https://t.co/iPTsKu5FIh

[Quanta Magazine @QuantaMagazine]

Speciation isn’t clean-cut. Evolutionary biologists increasingly view it as a continuum, rather than a process with discrete steps. There is a gray area between species. That’s where ecotypes come into play.
https://t.co/tnQxMDvkpN

[Quanta Magazine @QuantaMagazine]

The evolutionary biologist Jordan Douglas recently used the evolutionary history of one of life’s essential enzymes to develop a mathematical framework for how quickly species evolve and change. https://t.co/iN9FqbmT7p

[Quanta Magazine @QuantaMagazine]

A team of scientists set out to kill a bunch of dirt. But it’s not such an easy thing to do. Their work is helping us understand how life may have begun. https://t.co/iPTsKu5FIh

[Quanta Magazine @QuantaMagazine]

When you smell a rose, more than 800 different odorants enter your nose and bind to olfactory receptors expressed in the cell membranes of various neurons, which fire to create a pattern interpreted by the brain.
https://t.co/YWrMfobxKv

[Quanta Magazine @QuantaMagazine]

What exactly triggers a lightning bolt? We still don’t know. Tune in to The Quanta Podcast: https://t.co/YIVVX900NQ

[Quanta Magazine @QuantaMagazine]

⛈️Learn more on the latest episode of The Quanta Podcast: https://t.co/YIVVX900NQ

[Quanta Magazine @QuantaMagazine]

While electricity plays a central role, lightning bolts are formed and shaped by the whole physics canon — from cosmic blasts to particle physics. In particular, triggering a bolt seems to require extreme events more typically associated with supernovas, black holes, and particle colliders than with fluffy clouds. 🧵

[Quanta Magazine @QuantaMagazine]

https://t.co/iPTsKu5FIh

[Quanta Magazine @QuantaMagazine]

☀️ When the sun shines on your skin, what does it hit? When it causes a sunburn, what went wrong?
https://t.co/SeY2I0yGjr

[Quanta Magazine @QuantaMagazine]

Solar Orbiter, a joint mission of the European Space Agency and NASA that launched in 2020, captured these two images in February 2021 and October 2023. As the sun approached its solar maximum (a year after the second image), observations revealed more explosions, dark sunspots, and swirls of super-hot gas.
https://t.co/rwLVvao0Mo

[Quanta Magazine @QuantaMagazine]

A years-long, obsessive side project in a French biochemistry lab offers new clues as to how life on Earth could have gotten started. https://t.co/iPTsKu5FIh

[Quanta Magazine @QuantaMagazine]

In early January, Garnet Chan and five other quantum chemists reached a key milestone in understanding the enzyme nitrogenase, which makes life on our planet possible. It was a major triumph for theoretical chemists, the outcome of decades of effort. But it also raised questions in the world of quantum computing.
https://t.co/GfwHq07gYP

[Quanta Magazine @QuantaMagazine]

Take this rare opportunity to stare directly into the sun:
https://t.co/UwH4WZC8VT