The famous thought experiment about the cat has long been a meme – but few have actually dug into what physicists meant and where reality ends.
Lab
Conformal Symmetry: Mathematics that Preserves Angles but Changes Scale
Mathematics & Statistics
What do a soap bubble, the Mercator map, and the equations of quantum physics have in common? They are united by conformal symmetry – a mathematical idea that sees form through scale.
Lab
How Mathematicians Are Teaching Plasma to 'Remember Itself': Geometry, Matrices, and Magnetic Vortices
Mathematics & Statistics
A new mathematical approach makes it possible to model the behavior of magnetized plasma while preserving the deep symmetry of its equations – a symmetry that is typically lost during computer simulations.
Lab
The Pauli Principle and Nuclear Clusters: How a 1970s Mathematical Trick Found Its Rigorous Explanation Half a Century Later
Physics & Space • Nuclear Physics
How the exclusion principle, formulated back in 1925, still poses challenges for nuclear physics – and why a new mathematical approach has finally set everything straight.
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Leibniz's Rule and Hyperforces: How Mathematics Helps Us Understand the Behavior of Liquids
Physics & Space • Mathematical Physics
How an old differentiation rule from the 17th century helps physicists understand the behavior of millions of particles at once, and why this is more important than it seems.
Lab
The Universe as an Elastic Membrane: Geometry Masquerading as Matter
Physics & Space • General Relativity
What if dark matter is not a substance, but the geometric response of the Universe to its own deformation? A new theory proposes an unexpected answer.
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Higher-Order Symmetries: How Mathematics Helps Physics Describe the New
Physics & Space • Mathematical Physics
How generalizing classical symmetries via second-rank Lie algebras paves the way for describing complex physical systems – from string theory to gauge fields.