decadesold

One of the oldest and simplest problems in geometry has caught mathematicians off guard—and not for the first time.Since antiquity, artists and geometers have wondered how shapes can tile the entire plane without gaps or overlaps. And yet, “not a lot has been known until fairly recent times,” said Alex Iosevich, a mathematician at the University of Rochester.The most obvious tilings repeat: It’s easy to cover a floor with copies of squares, triangles or hexagons. In the 1960s, mathematicians found strange sets of tiles…

A study led by astronomers at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) may have discovered the explanation for variations in the shapes of galaxies.By using artificial intelligence, researchers have potentially solved a long-standing question about the evolution of galaxies, speeding up their research process.The researchers have potentially resolved a long-standing question about the evolution of galaxies, using artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate their research.Since the invention of the…

The University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University scientists solved a decades-old mystery regarding how cells control their volume.Crowded rooms: How Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh researchers solved a cell mystery.A surreal video of stressed cells under a microscope inspired a group of kidney physiologists and biologists from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University to investigate a mystery: how do cells control their volume?Their research, which was recently…

Decades-old Nokia 3210 recovered: Know moreThis month, a woman found the phone, which looked washed away, while walking on Gold Coast’s Palm Beach in Australia. After finding it, her daughter took the popular mobile phone to school to show and tell.Why Nokia 3210 became popularWhen it came out in 1999, the Nokia 3210 was a very popular phone because it could last for 22 hours on a single charge and was durable. The phone also came with the famous mobile game Snake already on it. Other games, including Memory (pairs-memory…

Physicists have answered a longstanding question concerning interacting quantum particles in a disordered system.A Different Type of ChaosPhysicists from the University of California, Santa Barbara, the University of Maryland, and the University of Washington have solved a long-standing physics puzzle: how do interparticle interactions impact dynamical localization?“It’s a really old question inherited from condensed matter physics,” said David Weld, an experimental physicist at UCSB with specialties in ultracold atomic…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain A long-dead proposal to flood a bucolic valley north of Sacramento and create a massive reservoir for thirsty Southern California is finding new life—and opposition—amid the effects of climate change and worsening drought. …