mathematical physics – Quanta Magazine https://www.quantamagazine.org Illuminating science Mon, 16 Sep 2024 14:10:47 -0400 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2 Mathematicians Prove Hawking Wrong About the Most Extreme Black Holes https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-prove-hawking-wrong-about-extremal-black-holes-20240821/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-prove-hawking-wrong-about-extremal-black-holes-20240821/#respond Wed, 21 Aug 2024 14:31:25 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=139952 The post Mathematicians Prove Hawking Wrong About the Most Extreme Black Holes first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> To understand the universe, scientists look to its outliers. “You always want to know about the extreme cases — the special cases that lie at the edge,” said Carsten Gundlach, a mathematical physicist at the University of Southampton. Black holes are the enigmatic extremes of the cosmos. Within them, matter is packed so tightly that, according to Einstein’s general theory of relativity...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-prove-hawking-wrong-about-extremal-black-holes-20240821/feed/ 0 How Is Science Even Possible? https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-is-science-even-possible-20240620/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-is-science-even-possible-20240620/#respond Thu, 20 Jun 2024 13:20:11 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=138581 The post How Is Science Even Possible? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> The universe seems like it should be unfathomably complex. How then is science able to crack fundamental questions about nature and life? Scientists and philosophers alike have often commented on the “unreasonable” success of mathematics at describing the universe. That success has helped science probe some profound mysteries — but as the physicist Nigel Goldenfeld points out, it also helps that...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-is-science-even-possible-20240620/feed/ 0 Mathematicians Attempt to Glimpse Past the Big Bang https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-attempt-to-glimpse-past-the-big-bang-20240531/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-attempt-to-glimpse-past-the-big-bang-20240531/#respond Fri, 31 May 2024 14:08:57 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=138260 The post Mathematicians Attempt to Glimpse Past the Big Bang first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> About 13.8 billion years ago, the entire cosmos consisted of a tiny, hot, dense ball of energy that suddenly exploded. That’s how everything began, according to the standard scientific story of the Big Bang, a theory that first took shape in the 1920s. The story has been refined over the decades, most notably in the 1980s, when many cosmologists came to believe that in its first moments...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-attempt-to-glimpse-past-the-big-bang-20240531/feed/ 0 A Century Later, New Math Smooths Out General Relativity https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-century-later-new-math-smooths-out-general-relativity-20231130/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-century-later-new-math-smooths-out-general-relativity-20231130/#respond Thu, 30 Nov 2023 15:21:21 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=132734 The post A Century Later, New Math Smooths Out General Relativity first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity has been wildly successful at describing how gravity works and how it shapes the large-scale structure of the universe. It’s summed up in a saying by the physicist John Wheeler: “Space-time tells matter how to move; matter tells space-time how to curve.” Yet the mathematics of general relativity is also profoundly counterintuitive.

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-century-later-new-math-smooths-out-general-relativity-20231130/feed/ 0 Echoes of Electromagnetism Found in Number Theory https://www.quantamagazine.org/echoes-of-electromagnetism-found-in-number-theory-20231012/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/echoes-of-electromagnetism-found-in-number-theory-20231012/#respond Thu, 12 Oct 2023 13:52:15 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=131251 The post Echoes of Electromagnetism Found in Number Theory first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> In 2018, as he prepared to be awarded the Fields Medal, math’s highest honor, Akshay Venkatesh carried a piece of paper in his pocket. On it, he had written a table of mathematical expressions that for centuries have played a key role in number theory. Though the expressions had featured prominently in Venkatesh’s own research over the last decade, he carried them around not as a memento of what...

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