Stories by Quanta Magazine

Relying on evidence from Southwestern deserts, a biologist debunks an evolutionary theory that assumes continental sterility for Precambrian life

Support is growing for a decades-old physics idea suggesting that localized episodes of disordered brain activity help keep the overall system in healthy balance

A daring speculation offers a potential way forward in one of the great unsolved problems of mathematics: the behavior of the Navier-Stokes equations for fluid flow

With a new approach that treats the universe as a fluid, cosmologists plan to tease out the fine details of the big bang from its behavior and evolution

A physicist has proposed the provocative idea that life exists because the law of increasing entropy drives matter to acquire life-like physical properties

Mysterious episodes of genetic duplication in our great ape ancestors may have paved the way for human evolution

Improvements in how densely spheres and other shapes can be packed together could lead to advances in materials science, deep space communication and theoretical physics.

By investigating the central role played by knots in fluids and fields, physicists hope to run experiments that help them better understand turbulent flow in 3-D

To determine the nature of infinity, mathematicians face a choice between two new logical axioms. What they decide could help shape the future of mathematical truth

Analyzing individual cancer cells could reveal the answer to some of the disease’s most enduring mysteries

Experiments designed to probe this interface could revitalize a longstanding quest for a theory of quantum gravity

Physicists have completed a new round of searches for the answer to why matter dominates antimatter. But the radioactive decay that would solve the puzzle evades them

As physics prepares for ambitious projects like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, the field is seeking new methods of data-driven discovery

Cassandra Extavour and her colleagues, who study the origins of multicellular organisms and the evolution of cooperation, still disagree on the meaning of key concepts such as cooperation, competition and fitness

A computational study reveals surprising flexibility hidden within metabolic networks, providing new evidence for an evolutionary concept called exaptation

In the complex architecture that ferries fluids in plants and brains, scientists are finding a model of resilience

Musical chords naturally inhabit certain topological spaces, which show the possible paths that a composer can use to move between chords

Studies suggest that computer models called neural networks may learn to recognize patterns in data using the same algorithms as the human brain

Because of their aesthetic appeal, organic feel and easily understood structure, Goldberg polyhedra have a surprising number of applications ranging from golf-ball dimple patterns to nuclear-particle detector arrays

Symbiotic bacteria that dwell within insect cells are intricately intertwined with their hosts, prompting scientists to question when these bacteria stop being bona fide organisms and become part of the cell

Decades of confounding experiments have physicists considering a startling possibility: the universe might not make sense

Juggling has advanced enormously in recent decades, thanks in part to the mathematical study of possible patterns

The direction a bicycle has traveled can be determined by examining its tracks and thinking about tangent lines, geometric constraints and the bike's steering mechanism

New research has prompted a resurgence of interest in the patterning mechanisms Alan Turing proposed 60 years ago