Math
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- 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.
- Math
Chia seedlings verify Alan Turing’s ideas about patterns in nature
New experiments confirm that complex patterns in plants emerge from a model proposed by mathematician Alan Turing.
- Math
Mathematicians have finally discovered an elusive ‘einstein’ tile
After half a century, mathematicians succeed in finding an ‘einstein,’ a shape that forms a tiled pattern that never repeats.
- Math
Here’s a peek into the mathematics of black holes
The universe tells us slowly rotating black holes are stable. A nearly 1,000-page proof confirms it.
