How the Bird Eye Was Pushed to an Evolutionary Extreme | Quanta Magazine
The bird retina is one of the most energetically expensive tissues in the animal kingdom, yet it doesn’t use the energy advantage…
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How Unknowable Math Can Help Hide Secrets | Quanta Magazine
A graduate student recently harnessed the complexity of mathematical proofs to create a powerful new tool in cryptography.
Will We Ever Be Able To Forecast Volcanic Eruptions Like Weather? | Quanta…
It should be possible, but getting there will require a greater understanding of subsurface physics.
What Causes Lightning? The Answer Keeps Getting More Interesting. | Quanta…
Armed with a slew of new instruments, physicists are closing in on one of nature’s oldest mysteries — and finding that storm…
The Hidden Mathematical Dance Inside Plant Cells | Quanta Magazine
The sunlight-collecting organelles known as chloroplasts solve a packing problem: how to optimize photosynthesis without…
A Treasure Trove of Cambrian Fossils Rewrites the Story of Early Life | Quanta…
Remarkably preserved fossils found in southern China offer a fascinating window into what life looked like at the end of the…
What Can We Gain by Losing Infinity? | Quanta Magazine
Ultrafinitism, a philosophy that rejects the infinite, has long been dismissed as mathematical heresy. But it is also producing…
Why Math’s Final Axiom Proved So Controversial | Quanta Magazine
Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory is so widely accepted that modern mathematicians hardly think about it. But believing in its core…
The Ancient Weapons Active in Your Immune System Today | Quanta Magazine
Dozens of new discoveries reveal that defenses evolved by bacteria and viruses billions of years ago still define our own innate…
Long-Sought Proof Tames Some of Math’s Unruliest Equations | Quanta Magazine
Mathematicians finally understand the behavior of an important class of differential equations that describe everything from…
Do Beautiful Birds Have an Evolutionary Advantage? | Quanta Magazine
Richard Prum explains why he thinks feathers and vibrant traits in birds evolved not solely for survival, but also through…
How Distillation Makes AI Models Smaller and Cheaper | Quanta Magazine
Fundamental technique lets researchers use a big, expensive “teacher” model to train a “student” model for less.
How Much Energy Does It Take To Think? | Quanta Magazine
Studies of neural metabolism reveal our brain’s effort to keep us alive and the evolutionary constraints that sculpted our most…