The first planet beyond our solar system was identified just 30 years ago. Since then, thousands have been found and characterized. As we look for more, exoplanet experts are also probing for signs of alien biospheres hundreds of light-years away.

Dec 19, 2024 · Big Beaver Breakthroughs. This summer, a team of enthusiastic amateurs solved one of the biggest open questions in computer science when they found the fifth busy beaver.Named for a particularly industrious kind of computer program that takes a long time to run, the problem is connected to some of the deepest open questions in computer science and …

Quanta’s award-winning coverage of algebra, geometry, set theory, number theory, analysis, knot theory, topology, combinatorics, mathematical physics and more.

Jan 16, 2025 · Quanta’s award-winning coverage of astrophysics, cosmology, quantum physics, geophysics, condensed matter, statistical mechanics, chaos theory, climate science and more.

Dec 18, 2024 · Biologists used artificial intelligence to make discoveries about molecules and the brain, and overturned long-held assumptions about the immune system and RNA.

Sep 3, 2024 · This notion lies at the heart of what the late British physicist Peter Higgs, namesake of the Higgs field, and his competitors pointed out in the 1960s: that one field can stiffen other fields, thereby permitting their ripples to vibrate in place with a resonant frequency, and thus giving their particles mass.

Dec 17, 2024 · Astronomical Discoveries. The night sky holds many secrets. The flagship of modern astronomy, the James Webb Space Telescope, beamed down a few more this year, particularly in its observations of faraway objects from the universe’s first billion years.Banana-shaped galaxies, little red dots, grape-like clusters, shockingly big young black holes: …

Mar 14, 2024 · Teleporting people through space is still science fiction. But quantum teleportation is dramatically different and entirely real. In this episode, Janna Levin interviews the theoretical physicist John Preskill about teleporting bits and the promise of quantum technology.

Oct 30, 2024 · The discussion recalls a messy, largely forgotten episode from the dawn of the quantum era. In 1905, Einstein interpreted experimental data to mean that light is “quantized,” coming in discrete particles now called photons.

Oct 22, 2020 · This approach doesn’t offer insight into the relationships between the particles. The force-carrying particles (namely the photon, which conveys the electromagnetic force; the W and Z bosons, which convey the weak force; and the gluons, which convey the strong force) are put on the same footing as the matter particles those forces act between — quarks, electrons and …