Quanta
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Epic Effort to Ground Physics in Math Opens Up the Secrets of Time
By mathematically proving how individual molecules create the complex motion of fluids, three mathematicians have illuminated why time can’t flow in reverse.
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The Core of Fermat’s Last Theorem Just Got Superpowered
By extending the scope of the key insight behind Fermat’s Last Theorem, four mathematicians have made great strides toward building a “grand unified theory” of math.
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The Fastest Way Yet to Color Graphs
Researchers have devised a scheme for painting the edges of a graph that’s almost as speedy as possible.
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Dimension 126 Contains Strangely Twisted Shapes, Mathematicians Prove
A new proof represents the culmination of a 65-year-old story about anomalous shapes in special dimensions.
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‘Paraparticles’ Would Be a Third Kingdom of Quantum Particle
A new proposal makes the case that paraparticles — a new category of quantum particle — could be created in exotic materials.
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Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex
A new suggestion that complexity increases over time, not just in living organisms but in the nonliving world, promises to rewrite notions of time and evolution.
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‘Once in a Century’ Proof Settles Math’s Kakeya Conjecture
The deceptively simple Kakeya conjecture has bedeviled mathematicians for 50 years. A new proof of the conjecture in three dimensions illuminates a whole crop of related problems.
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Years After the Early Death of a Math Genius, Her Ideas Gain New Life
A new proof extends the work of the late Maryam Mirzakhani, cementing her legacy as a pioneer of alien mathematical realms.
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The Largest Sofa You Can Move Around a Corner
A new proof reveals the answer to the decades-old “moving sofa” problem. It highlights how even the simplest optimization problems can have counterintuitive answers.