Bookmarks (14)

Promise and controversy continues to surround string theory as a potential unified theory of everything. In the latest episode of The Joy of Why, Cumrun Vafa discusses his progress in trying to find good, testable models hidden among the ‘swampland’ of impossible universes. The post Will We Ever Prove String Theory? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Black hole and Big Bang singularities break our best theory of gravity. A trilogy of theorems hints that physicists will need to go to the ends of space and time to find a fix. The post Singularities in Space-Time Prove Hard to Kill first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Geometry may have its origins thousands of years ago in ancient land surveying, but it has also had a surprising impact on modern physics. In the latest episode of The Joy of Why, Yang-Hui He explores geometry’s evolution and its future potential through AI. The post How Did Geometry Create Modern Physics? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

From living matter to molecules to elementary particles, the world is made of “chiral” objects that differ from their reflected forms. The post How the Universe Differs From Its Mirror Image first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The physicist Sidney Nagel delights in solving mysteries of the universe that are hiding in plain sight. The post Finding Beauty and Truth in Mundane Occurrences first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Modern thinking machines owe their existence to insights from the physics of complex materials. The post The Strange Physics That Gave Birth to AI first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Recent flybys of the fiery world refute a leading theory of its inner structure — and reveal how little is understood about geologically active moons. The post What’s Going On Inside Io, Jupiter’s Volcanic Moon? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Quantum gravity could help physicists unite the currently incompatible worlds of quantum mechanics and gravity. In this episode, Monika Schleier-Smith discusses her pioneering experimental approach, using laser-cooled atoms to explore whether gravity could emerge from quantum entanglement. The post Can Quantum Gravity Be Created in the Lab? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

A new proposal makes the case that paraparticles — a new category of quantum particle — could be created in exotic materials. The post ‘Paraparticles’ Would Be a Third Kingdom of Quantum Particle first appeared on Quanta Magazine

A new suggestion that complexity increases over time, not just in living organisms but in the nonliving world, promises to rewrite notions of time and evolution. The post Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Astronomers are ready to search for the fingerprints of life in faraway planetary atmospheres. But first, they need to know where to look — and that means figuring out which planets are likely to have atmospheres in the first place. The post The Road Map to Alien Life Passes Through the ‘Cosmic Shoreline’ first appeared on Quanta Magazine

In math and computer science, researchers have long understood that some questions are fundamentally unanswerable. Now physicists are exploring how even ordinary physical systems put hard limits on what we can predict, even in principle. The post ‘Next-Level’ Chaos Traces the True Limit of Predictability first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Quantum calculations amount to sophisticated estimates. But in 1931, Hans Bethe intuited precisely how a chain of particles would behave — an insight that had far-reaching consequences. The post How Hans Bethe Stumbled Upon Perfect Quantum Theories first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Emmy Noether showed that fundamental physical laws are just a consequence of simple symmetries. A century later, her insights continue to shape physics. The post How Noether’s Theorem Revolutionized Physics first appeared on Quanta Magazine