emergence – 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 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 The New Math of How Large-Scale Order Emerges https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-new-math-of-how-large-scale-order-emerges-20240610/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-new-math-of-how-large-scale-order-emerges-20240610/#respond Mon, 10 Jun 2024 14:50:02 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=138428 The post The New Math of How Large-Scale Order Emerges first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> A few centuries ago, the swirling polychromatic chaos of Jupiter’s atmosphere spawned the immense vortex that we call the Great Red Spot. From the frantic firing of billions of neurons in your brain comes your unique and coherent experience of reading these words. As pedestrians each try to weave their path on a crowded sidewalk, they begin to follow one another, forming streams that no one...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-new-math-of-how-large-scale-order-emerges-20240610/feed/ 0 How Is Flocking Like Computing? https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-is-flocking-like-computing-20240328/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-is-flocking-like-computing-20240328/#respond Thu, 28 Mar 2024 13:00:00 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=136659 The post How Is Flocking Like Computing? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Birds flock. Locusts swarm. Fish school. Within assemblies of organisms that seem as though they could get chaotic, order somehow emerges. The collective behaviors of animals differ in their details from one species to another, but they largely adhere to principles of collective motion that physicists have worked out over centuries. Now, using technologies that only recently became available...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-is-flocking-like-computing-20240328/feed/ 0 What Is Quantum Teleportation? https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-quantum-teleportation-20240314/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-quantum-teleportation-20240314/#respond Thu, 14 Mar 2024 13:00:37 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=136247 The post What Is Quantum Teleportation? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Quantum teleportation isn’t just science fiction; it’s entirely real and happening in laboratories today. But teleporting quantum particles and information is a far cry from beaming people through space. In some ways, it’s even more astonishing. John Preskill, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, is one of the leading theoreticians of quantum computing and information.

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-quantum-teleportation-20240314/feed/ 0 New Proof Shows That ‘Expander’ Graphs Synchronize https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-proof-shows-that-expander-graphs-synchronize-20230724/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-proof-shows-that-expander-graphs-synchronize-20230724/#respond Mon, 24 Jul 2023 14:36:23 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=128181 The post New Proof Shows That ‘Expander’ Graphs Synchronize first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Six years ago, Afonso Bandeira and Shuyang Ling were attempting to come up with a better way to discern clusters in enormous data sets when they stumbled into a surreal world. Ling realized that the equations they’d come up with were, unexpectedly, a perfect match for a mathematical model of spontaneous synchronization. Spontaneous synchronization is a phenomenon in which oscillators...

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