random matrix theory – 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 Neutrinos Lead to Unexpected Discovery in Basic Math https://www.quantamagazine.org/neutrinos-lead-to-unexpected-discovery-in-basic-math-20191113/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/neutrinos-lead-to-unexpected-discovery-in-basic-math-20191113/#respond Wed, 13 Nov 2019 19:15:06 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=78223 The post Neutrinos Lead to Unexpected Discovery in Basic Math first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> After breakfast one morning in August, the mathematician Terence Tao opened an email from three physicists he didn’t know. The trio explained that they’d stumbled across a simple formula that, if true, established an unexpected relationship between some of the most basic and important objects in linear algebra. The formula “looked too good to be true,” said Tao, who is a professor at the...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/neutrinos-lead-to-unexpected-discovery-in-basic-math-20191113/feed/ 0 Universal Pattern Explains Why Materials Conduct https://www.quantamagazine.org/universal-pattern-explains-why-materials-conduct-20190506/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/universal-pattern-explains-why-materials-conduct-20190506/#respond Mon, 06 May 2019 15:45:42 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=71338 The post Universal Pattern Explains Why Materials Conduct first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> In a wire, electrons rebound off each other in such a complicated fashion that there’s no way to follow exactly what’s happening. But over the last 50 years, mathematicians and physicists have begun to grasp that this blizzard of movement settles into elegant statistical patterns. Electron movement takes one statistical shape in a conductor and a different statistical shape in an insulator. That...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/universal-pattern-explains-why-materials-conduct-20190506/feed/ 0 The Universal Pattern Popping Up in Math, Physics and Biology https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-universal-pattern-popping-up-in-math-physics-and-biology-20180823/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-universal-pattern-popping-up-in-math-physics-and-biology-20180823/#respond Thu, 23 Aug 2018 17:08:45 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=62337 The post The Universal Pattern Popping Up in Math, Physics and Biology first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> “Hello! I am David Kaplan, and I am not an expert. But I hope in this series to learn as much as possible and explain it to you the best way I can.” So began Quanta Magazine’s In Theory video series, hosted by David Kaplan, a theoretical particle physicist and co-creator of the award-winning documentary Particle Fever. Our first video, published in the summer of 2015, asked and attempted to answer...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-universal-pattern-popping-up-in-math-physics-and-biology-20180823/feed/ 0 A Bird’s-Eye View of Nature’s Hidden Order https://www.quantamagazine.org/hyperuniformity-found-in-birds-math-and-physics-20160712/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/hyperuniformity-found-in-birds-math-and-physics-20160712/#comments Tue, 12 Jul 2016 13:25:42 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=26785 The post A Bird’s-Eye View of Nature’s Hidden Order first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Seven years ago, Joe Corbo stared into the eye of a chicken and saw something astonishing. The color-sensitive cone cells that carpeted the retina (detached from the fowl, and mounted under a microscope) appeared as polka dots of five different colors and sizes. But Corbo observed that, unlike the randomly dispersed cones in human eyes, or the neat rows of cones in the eyes of many fish...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/hyperuniformity-found-in-birds-math-and-physics-20160712/feed/ 18 At the Far Ends of a New Universal Law https://www.quantamagazine.org/beyond-the-bell-curve-a-new-universal-law-20141015/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/beyond-the-bell-curve-a-new-universal-law-20141015/#comments Wed, 15 Oct 2014 15:23:05 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=14594 The post At the Far Ends of a New Universal Law first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Imagine an archipelago where each island hosts a single tortoise species and all the islands are connected — say by rafts of flotsam. As the tortoises interact by dipping into one another’s food supplies, their populations fluctuate. In 1972, the biologist Robert May devised a simple mathematical model that worked much like the archipelago. He wanted to figure out whether a complex ecosystem can...

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