Quanta Abstractions

Mathematicians Marvel at ‘Crazy’ Cuts Through Four Dimensions

Topologists prove two new results that bring some order to the confoundingly difficult study of four-dimensional shapes. The post Mathematicians Marvel at ‘Crazy’ Cuts Through Four Dimensions first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The central objects of study in topology are spaces called manifolds, which look flat when you zoom in on them. The surface of a sphere, for instance, is a two-dimensional manifold. Topologists understand such two-dimensional manifolds very well. And they have developed tools that let them make sense of three-dimensional manifolds and those with five or more dimensions. But in four dimensions...

Source

Originally published in Quanta Abstractions.

More from Quanta

Quanta1 min read
Avi Wigderson, Complexity Theory Pioneer, Wins Turing Award
The prolific researcher found deep connections between randomness and computation and spent a career influencing cryptographers, complexity researchers and more. The post Avi Wigderson, Complexity Theory Pioneer, Wins Turing Award first ap
Quanta1 min readIntelligence (AI) & Semantics
How Selective Forgetting Can Help AI Learn Better
Erasing key information during training results in machine learning models that can learn new languages faster and more easily. The post How Selective Forgetting Can Help AI Learn Better first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta1 min read
Fresh X-Rays Reveal a Universe as Clumpy as Cosmology Predicts
By mapping the largest structures in the universe in X-rays, cosmologists have found striking agreement with their standard theoretical model of how the universe evolves. The post Fresh X-Rays Reveal a Universe as Clumpy as Cosmology Predi

Related