Facts So Romantic

The study of memory has always been one of the stranger outposts of science. In the 1950s, an unknown psychology professor at the University of Michigan named James McConnell made headlines—and…

Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog.Compared to the unsolved mysteries of the universe, far less gets said about one of the most profound facts to have…

What is a species? It’s a question that has agonized scientists since well before Darwin. With some exceptions, the thinking has landed on an evidently firm reproductive barrier: Members…

Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog.Like cosmic hard drives, black holes pack troves of data into compact spaces. But ever since Stephen Hawking calculated…

Talk of “Mother Trees,” from a scientist studying plant life, can sound fanciful, like something out of a fairy tale. Suzanne Simard is here to tell you that it’s not. For the past…

In 2002, David M. Morens, now Senior Scientific Advisor at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, wrote an essay called “At the Deathbed of Consumptive Art.” It featured…

Earth is most fortunate to have vast webs of magnetic fields surrounding it. Without them, much of our atmosphere would have been gradually torn away by powerful solar winds long ago, making…

Recently I was in San Francisco, a city known for its tech companies, steep hills, and fierce winds. Each day I’d run around the neighborhood and up through the park, ending with a spectacular…

Larry Mayer, a marine geophysicist, gets shivers when he looks at a night sky of stars. He understands why we explore outer space and NASA has spent billions mapping our extraterrestrial…

Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog.Of all the known particles in the universe, only photons outnumber neutrinos. Despite their abundance, however, neutrinos…