How a Human Smell Receptor Works Is Finally Revealed
Human olfactory receptors belong to an enormous family of proteins known as G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). Situated within cell membranes, these ...
Tag: quanta magazine
Primitive Asgard Cells Show Life on the Brink of Complexity
The finding that Lokis have actin tentacles adds plausibility to a eukaryogenesis scenario called the inside-out model, Spang and Schleper ...
A Teenager Solved a Stubborn Prime Number ‘Look-Alike’ Riddle
Mathematicians wanted to better understand these numbers that so closely resemble the most fundamental objects in number theory, the primes. ...
A Crucial Particle Physics Computer Program Risks Obsolescence
Recently, I watched a fellow particle physicist talk about a calculation he had pushed to a new height of precision. ...
How the Physics of Nothing Underlies Everything
Most of the quantum fields that fill our universe have one, and only one, preferred state, in which they’ll remain ...
At Long Last, Mathematical Proof That Black Holes Are Stable
In 1963, the mathematician Roy Kerr found a solution to Einstein’s equations that precisely described the spacetime outside what we ...