explainers – 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 Our Longest Nerve Orchestrates the Mind-Body Connection https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-our-longest-nerve-orchestrates-the-mind-body-connection-20240826/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-our-longest-nerve-orchestrates-the-mind-body-connection-20240826/#respond Mon, 26 Aug 2024 14:45:37 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=140053 The post How Our Longest Nerve Orchestrates the Mind-Body Connection first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> It is late at night. You are alone and wandering empty streets in search of your parked car when you hear footsteps creeping up from behind. Your heart pounds, your blood pressure skyrockets. Goose bumps appear on your arms, sweat on your palms. Your stomach knots and your muscles coil, ready to sprint or fight. Now imagine the same scene, but without any of the body’s innate responses to an...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-our-longest-nerve-orchestrates-the-mind-body-connection-20240826/feed/ 0 How Colorful Ribbon Diagrams Became the Face of Proteins https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-colorful-ribbon-diagrams-became-the-face-of-proteins-20240823/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-colorful-ribbon-diagrams-became-the-face-of-proteins-20240823/#respond Fri, 23 Aug 2024 14:43:59 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=140004 The post How Colorful Ribbon Diagrams Became the Face of Proteins first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Jane Richardson never considered herself an artist. Then, in the late 1970s, the structural biologist found herself in need of some colored pencils, pastels and sketching paper. Richardson, a professor of biochemistry at Duke University, studied proteins, the biomolecules that underpin all the workings of life. At the time, structural biologists were getting better at creating 3D models of...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-colorful-ribbon-diagrams-became-the-face-of-proteins-20240823/feed/ 0 The Geometric Tool That Solved Einstein’s Relativity Problem https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-geometric-tool-that-solved-einsteins-relativity-problem-20240812/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-geometric-tool-that-solved-einsteins-relativity-problem-20240812/#respond Mon, 12 Aug 2024 14:49:08 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=139724 The post The Geometric Tool That Solved Einstein’s Relativity Problem first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> After Albert Einstein published his special theory of relativity in 1905, he spent the next decade trying to come up with a theory of gravity. But for years, he kept running up against a problem. He wanted to show that gravity is really a warping of the geometry of space-time caused by the presence of matter. But he also knew that time and distance are counterintuitively relative: They change...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-geometric-tool-that-solved-einsteins-relativity-problem-20240812/feed/ 0 How Base 3 Computing Beats Binary https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-base-3-computing-beats-binary-20240809/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-base-3-computing-beats-binary-20240809/#respond Fri, 09 Aug 2024 13:36:26 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=139650 The post How Base 3 Computing Beats Binary first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Three, as Schoolhouse Rock! told children of the 1970s, is a magic number. Three little pigs; three beds, bowls and bears for Goldilocks; three Star Wars trilogies. You need at least three legs for a stool to stand on its own, and at least three points to define a triangle. The number 3 also suggests a different way of counting. Our familiar base 10 decimal system uses the 10 digits from zero to 9.

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-base-3-computing-beats-binary-20240809/feed/ 0 What Is Analog Computing? https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-analog-computing-20240802/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-analog-computing-20240802/#respond Fri, 02 Aug 2024 14:53:14 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=139518 The post What Is Analog Computing? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Computing today is almost entirely digital. The vast informational catacombs of the internet, the algorithms that power AI, the screen you’re reading this on — all are powered by electronic circuits manipulating binary digits — 0 and 1, off and on. We live, it has been said, in the digital age. But it’s not obvious why a system that operates using discrete chunks of information would be good at...

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