What We're Reading

Like the formation of constellations from stars, topological data analysis helps mathematicians build revealing shapes from scattered dots — finding patterns in the brain, drugs and evolution.

Research has demonstrated that biological cells actively change shape to respond to their surroundings when moving in confined regions.

When quantum computers become powerful enough, they could theoretically crack the encryption algorithms that keep us safe. The race is on to find new ones.

Over 10 days, researchers participating in the once-a-decade “Snowmass process” attempted to build a unified scientific vision for the future of particle physics.

Many biologists assume that bizarre quantum phenomena play a relatively negligible role inside the cell. A recent theoretical analysis of the chemical bonds holding DNA together, however, suggests that these effects might occur far more frequently than once thought — and act as a major source of genetic mutations.

A chameleon-like force that shifts its nature based on its environment could explain a major physics quandary: how the mysterious substance called dark energy is compelling the cosmos to expand faster and faster. But research published recently in Nature Physics casts doubt on some chameleon theories.

Researchers at the University of Chicago and colleagues have identified a way of manipulating the spin states of the molecular qubits by placing them in an asymmetric chemical environment. The resulting spin states are more stable against noise from fluctuating magnetic fields than those in symmetric environments.

Chiara Mingarelli, an astrophysicist at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics, describes the effects when two galaxies — and the supermassive black holes at these galaxies' centers — merge into one.

For decades, scientists have been mystified about what happens to stuff that falls into a black hole. The quandary is called the black hole information paradox, and it has stopped physics in its tracks. But in recent years, scientists have made a breakthrough that may finally solve the puzzle and begin to show how black holes really work.

The National Ignition Facility has produced a plasma in which self-heating locally surpasses not only the external heating but also all loss mechanisms, fulfilling the so-called Lawson criterion for fusion ignition. The result brings the scheme tantalizingly close to a holy grail of the field: getting fusion to produce a net energy greater than that contained in the driving laser pulses.