Jordana Cepelewicz – 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 ‘Sensational’ Proof Delivers New Insights Into Prime Numbers https://www.quantamagazine.org/sensational-proof-delivers-new-insights-into-prime-numbers-20240715/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/sensational-proof-delivers-new-insights-into-prime-numbers-20240715/#respond Mon, 15 Jul 2024 13:55:18 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=139099 The post ‘Sensational’ Proof Delivers New Insights Into Prime Numbers first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Sometimes mathematicians try to tackle a problem head on, and sometimes they come at it sideways. That’s especially true when the mathematical stakes are high, as with the Riemann hypothesis, whose solution comes with a $1 million reward from the Clay Mathematics Institute. Its proof would give mathematicians much deeper certainty about how prime numbers are distributed, while also implying a host...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/sensational-proof-delivers-new-insights-into-prime-numbers-20240715/feed/ 0 How America’s Fastest Swimmers Use Math to Win Gold https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-americas-fastest-swimmers-use-math-to-win-gold-20240710/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-americas-fastest-swimmers-use-math-to-win-gold-20240710/#respond Wed, 10 Jul 2024 14:45:34 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=139036 The post How America’s Fastest Swimmers Use Math to Win Gold first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> In the fall of 2014, Andrew Wilson took a front-row seat in Ken Ono’s number theory class at Emory University in Atlanta. Wilson was not only double majoring in applied math and physics, he was a walk-on member of Emory’s swim team. Ono took an interest in Wilson’s ambitions. “We thought that together, maybe we could use our interest in mathematics to help him improve as a swimmer,” Ono said. Ono...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-americas-fastest-swimmers-use-math-to-win-gold-20240710/feed/ 0 How the Square Root of 2 Became a Number https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-square-root-of-2-became-a-number-20240621/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-square-root-of-2-became-a-number-20240621/#respond Fri, 21 Jun 2024 13:50:15 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=138611 The post How the Square Root of 2 Became a Number first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> The ancient Greeks wanted to believe that the universe could be described in its entirety using only whole numbers and the ratios between them — fractions, or what we now call rational numbers. But this aspiration was undermined when they considered a square with sides of length 1, only to find that the length of its diagonal couldn’t possibly be written as a fraction. The first proof of this...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-square-root-of-2-became-a-number-20240621/feed/ 0 How Failure Has Made Mathematics Stronger https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-failure-has-made-mathematics-stronger-20240522/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-failure-has-made-mathematics-stronger-20240522/#respond Wed, 22 May 2024 14:15:33 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=138070 The post How Failure Has Made Mathematics Stronger first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Reading a math paper is a bit like having dinner at a nice restaurant. The entrée might taste delicious, but it doesn’t tell the full story of how it was made. Clever recipes that end up tasting funky don’t make the menu; undercooked dishes are (usually) not served to customers. But missteps in both conception and execution are important parts of the process. Danny Calegari, a topologist at the...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-failure-has-made-mathematics-stronger-20240522/feed/ 0 Strangely Curved Shapes Break 50-Year-Old Geometry Conjecture https://www.quantamagazine.org/strangely-curved-shapes-break-50-year-old-geometry-conjecture-20240514/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/strangely-curved-shapes-break-50-year-old-geometry-conjecture-20240514/#respond Tue, 14 May 2024 14:12:40 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=137913 The post Strangely Curved Shapes Break 50-Year-Old Geometry Conjecture first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> In an old Indian parable, six blind men each touch a different part of an elephant. They disagree about what the elephant must look like: Is it smooth or rough? Is it like a snake (so thinks the man touching the trunk) or a fan (as the man touching the ear proposes)? If the blind men had combined their insights, they might have been able to give a correct account of the nature of the elephant.

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