Accessible and essential coverage of today's challenging speculative cutting-edge science
from Quanta Magazine. If you're a science and data nerd like me you may be interested in Alice
and Bob Meet the Wall of Fire and The Prime Number Conspiracy from Quanta Magazine and Thomas
Lin. - Bill Gates These stories reveal the latest efforts to untangle the mysteries of the
universe. Bringing together the best and most interesting science stories appearing in Quanta
Magazine over the past five years Alice and Bob Meet the Wall of Fire reports on some of the
greatest scientific minds as they test the limits of human knowledge. Quanta under
editor-in-chief Thomas Lin is the only popular publication that offers in-depth coverage of
today's challenging speculative cutting-edge science. It communicates science by taking it
seriously wrestling with difficult concepts and clearly explaining them in a way that speaks
to our innate curiosity about our world and ourselves. In the title story Alice and
Bob—beloved characters of various thought experiments in physics—grapple with gravitational
forces possible spaghettification and a massive wall of fire as Alice jumps into a black
hole. Another story considers whether the universe is impossible in light of experimental
results at the Large Hadron Collider. We learn about quantum reality and the mystery of quantum
entanglement explore the source of time's arrow and witness a eureka moment when a quantum
physicist exclaims: Finally we can understand why a cup of coffee equilibrates in a room.” We
reflect on humans' enormous skulls and the Brain Boom consider the evolutionary benefits of
loneliness peel back the layers of the newest artificial-intelligence algorithms follow the
battle for the heart and soul of physics” and mourn the disappearance of the diphoton bump ”
revealed to be a statistical fluctuation rather than a revolutionary new particle. These
stories from Quanta give us a front-row seat to scientific discovery. Contributors Philip Ball
K. C. Cole Robbert Dijkgraaf Dan Falk Courtney Humphries Ferris Jabr Katia Moskvitch
George Musser Michael Nielsen Jennifer Ouellette John Pavlus Emily Singer Andreas von
Bubnoff Frank Wilczek Natalie Wolchover Carl Zimmer
