Black holes aren’t always in the dark. Astronomers have spotted intense light shows shining from just outside the event horizon of supermassive black holes, including the one at our galaxy’s core. However, scientists couldn’t identify the cause of these flares beyond the suspected involvement of magnetic fields.
For 15 years, scientists have been baffled by the mysterious way water flows through the tiny passages of carbon nanotubes — pipes with walls that can be just one atom thick. The streams have confounded all theories of fluid dynamics; paradoxically, fluid passes more easily through narrower nanotubes, and in all nanotubes it moves with almost no friction. What friction there is has also defied explanation.
Collaborations between theorists with the Simons Collaboration on Ultra-Quantum Matter (UQM) and experimentalists have yielded new insights into anyons, the so-called third kingdom of particles. The researchers report their findings in papers published in Science and Nature.
Beginning this year, the Simons Foundation invites mathematicians, scientists and science lovers in the New York City area to its relaunched weekly lecture series, the Simons Foundation Presidential Lectures. These curated, high-level lectures are free to attend, and feature leading scientists and mathematicians discussing their work at the frontiers of research. The lectures aim to foster discourse and drive discovery among the local research community.
The Flatiron Institute is delighted to announce that SueYeon Chung and Alex Williams will join the Center for Computational Neuroscience (CCN) as associate research scientists and project leaders. In addition, they will have joint appointments as assistant professors with the NYU Center for Neural Science (CNS), further fostering between those pursuing theoretical work at the CCN and researchers at nearby institutions.
Totaling 4,233 universe simulations, millions of galaxies and 350 terabytes of data, a new release from the CAMELS project is a treasure trove for cosmologists. CAMELS — which stands for Cosmology and Astrophysics with MachinE Learning Simulations — aims to use those simulations to train artificial intelligence models to decipher the universe’s properties.
The Simons Foundation is pleased to announce that mathematician and physicist Ingrid Daubechies has joined its board of directors.
The prevalence of autism diagnoses has skyrocketed over recent decades. In some parts of the world, this uptick has been so significant that experts have characterized it as an ‘epidemic.’ Yet scientists still don’t have a full explanation for autism’s persistent global rise.
Materials that look like mosaics of triangular tiles at the atomic level sometimes have paradoxical properties, and quantum physicists have finally found out why.
For early-career astrophysicists, the name David Spergel can be intimidating. He’s a leading figure in the scientific community and co-winner of the 2018 Breakthrough Prize in fundamental physics. He’s a prominent national voice on government funding of science and has frequently testified before Congress. He is the founding director of the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA) and is now the president of the institute’s parent organization, the Simons Foundation.