Math
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
A catalog of all human cells reveals a mathematical pattern
Smaller cells occur in larger numbers in the human body, and cells of different size classes contribute equally to our overall mass.
- Math
Here’s why mathematicians are so interested in cake cutting
The question of how to fairly divide resources attracts game theorists, computer scientists, economists, legal experts and more.
- Math
How geometry solves architectural problems for bees and wasps
Adding five - and seven - sided cells in pairs during nest building helps the colonyfit together differently sized hexa gonal cells , a new study shows.
- Life
A 407-million-year-old plant’s leaves skipped the usual Fibonacci spirals
Most land plants living today have spiral patterns involving the famous Fibonacci sequence of numbers. But an extinct, ancient plant did not.
- Quantum Physics
Quantum computers could break the internet. Here’s how to save it
Today's encryption schemes will be vulnerable to future quantum computers, but new algorithms and a quantum internet could help.
- Math
Here’s how we could begin decoding an alien message using math
A new mathematical approach looks for order in strings of bits – without relying on human assumptions.
- Math
A ‘vampire einstein’ tile outdoes mathematicians’ latest feat
A newfound shape covers an infinite plane with a pattern that doesn’t repeat and without mirror images of the shape.
- Math
‘Once Upon a Prime’ finds the hidden math in literature
In her new book, mathematician Sarah Hart explains how math shapes all sorts of literary works, from nursery rhymes to Moby-Dick.
- Math
How Pythagoras turned math into a tool for understanding reality
Reality was made of numbers, Pythagoras said, and he employed numbers to explain the “harmony of the heavens.”
- Physics
These worms can escape tangled blobs in an instant. Here’s how
Tangled masses of California blackworms form over minutes but untangle in tens of milliseconds. Now scientists know how.
- Math
Dense crowds of pedestrians shift into surprisingly orderly lines. Math explains why
New research into collective behavior adds to decades of study on the wisdom of crowds.
- Math
Here’s why the geometric patterns in salt flats worldwide look so similar
New research suggests the shared geometry of salt flats from Death Valley to Iran comes from fluid flows underground.
