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Today:
How a Futurama plotline led to a totally new math proof
NEWS | 29 July 2026
In an episode of the cartoon, a machine lets characters swap bodies, but they can’t switch back with the same person. At the very end, you swap out xwith i + 1 and y with 1: (1, x) (2, x) (3, x) ... (i, x) × (i + 1, y) (i + 2, y) ... (n, y) × (i + 1, x) × (1, y). Expressing their false composition abstractly by (2, 1), we get the following set with Clyde (x) and Tate (y): (2, 1, x, y). Thus, according to Keeler’s approach, the following permutations are necessary: (1, x), (2, y), (2, x) and (1, y). Performing them one after the other, the set changes as follows: (2, x, 1, y), (y, x, 1, 2), (y, 2, 1, x), (1, 2, y, x).

Top Stories:
Why Einstein's theories of relativity make time travel possible
NEWS | 29 July 2026
The basis for most ideas around potential time travel lies in Albert Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity, which he published in 1905 and 1915, respectively. Travel into the Future thanks to Rapid MovementEinstein’s special theory of relativity makes time travel possible—but only into the future. Journeys into the PastTechnically, the equations of general relativity also allow for backward time travel through the existence of so-called closed timelike curves. Why did more than 20 years pass between the development of general relativity and this insight? The Einstein field equations that underly general relativity are differential equations.

World:
2026 Fields Medals go to four young mathematicians
NEWS | 29 July 2026
The mathematician Hong Wang is one of four recipients of the 2026 Fields Medals, awards often called “math’s Nobel Prize.”PHILADELPHIA—Math’s most prestigious prizes were announced today at the International Congress of Mathematicians. Wang and Deng represent the prizes’ only Chinese-born recipients besides mathematician Shing-Tung Yau, who won a Fields Medal in 1982. Simons FoundationNow Wang possesses the ultimate qualification for any list of mathematical greats: a Fields Medal. Wang’s Fields Medal, he says, “is well deserved.”Wang remembers being excited when Mirzakhani became the first woman to win a Fields medal in 2014. Although a Fields Medal’s monetary value is modest—just the 14-karat-gold medal itself plus 15,000 Canadian dollars—the prestige it bestows is invaluable.

Current Events:
550 years later, scientists claim to have solved what killed Botticelli’s muse
NEWS | 29 July 2026
Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli painted Simonetta Vespucci as Venus rising from the waves. Now scientists think they’ve solved how she diedI agree my information will be processed in accordance with the Scientific American and Springer Nature Limited Privacy Policy . By providing your email address, you also consent to having the email address shared with third parties for those purposes. We believe Simonetta’s death itself—sudden, rapid, and dramatic according to contemporary accounts—is consistent with a specific medical emergency: pituitary tumor apoplexy. Apoplexy occurs when a pituitary tumor bleeds or rapidly swells.

Sponsored:
Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 29 July 2026
SmartSync is a mobile application, compatible with any Android smartphone, that syncs your important data to your email. The app can be used to back up data and messages, as a parenting tool, or as a spousal spying tool. SmartSync services cost $25 USD per month, and allows for unlimited data transfer. The app can be found Here

News Flash:
Humans may have spoken 10 times as many languages 2,000 years ago
NEWS | 29 July 2026
But today’s linguistic diversity may be only the shadow of a time when humans conversed in 10 times as many tongues. During that brief “golden age,” as the authors put it, the number of languages soared into the tens of thousands. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. To trace the path of linguistic diversity from that moment to the present, Blasi and his colleagues computationally modeled thousands of possible trajectories. “It takes much less than a colonial powerhouse to destroy linguistic diversity,” Blasi says.

Latest:
How a 99-year-old mathematician unraveled a century-old braid mystery
NEWS | 29 July 2026
To make the braid, one dangles the strands vertically and weaves them downward however they like. If so, they were dubbed “unfaithful.” The problem was determining which, if any, of his braid representations were unfaithful. Columbia University mathematician Joan Birman helped to popularize the question about 60 years ago. In the 1970s Birman wrote a foundational book for mathematicians, Braids, Links, and Mapping Class Groups. The disks, which are defined as the insides of the loops, tell you how to calculate the Burau matrices.

Breaking:
The math of traffic jams and how to avoid them
NEWS | 29 July 2026
These are known as phantom traffic jams—stop-start waves that travel backwards through traffic even though every vehicle is moving forwards. One of the simplest relationships in traffic flow theory is q = ρv, where q is the traffic flow (the number of vehicles passing a point each hour), ρ is the traffic density (amount of cars on the road) and v is their average speed. Initially, adding more vehicles obviously increases the overall traffic flow, as more vehicles pass along the road. In traffic, the disturbances we seek to prevent are the stop-start waves that create phantom traffic jams. These ideas are central to the design of intelligent transport systems, where connected vehicles and infrastructure must cooperate to improve traffic flow.

Trending:
OpenAI admits its agent went rogue and hacked AI start-up Hugging Face
NEWS | 29 July 2026
An OpenAI autonomous agent went rogue and hacked into another artificial intelligence start-up’s infrastructure, the ChatGPT maker said in a blog post. Once there, the agent tried to hack into the infrastructure of Hugging Face, an AI start-up that hosts open-source models and datasets. This matches the ‘agentic attacker’ scenario the industry has been forecasting,” Hugging Face wrote. OpenAI said it would work with Hugging Face to further investigate the incident. Torr says some companies may not have been as forthcoming as OpenAI and Hugging Face, adding that independent AI safety research is increasingly crucial as time goes on.

This Just In:
When will the cyclosporiasis outbreaks end?
NEWS | 29 July 2026
In Michigan alone there have been more than 8,000 cases of cyclosporiasis, a gastrointestinal illness caused by a parasite that's infecting lettuce. As of July 24, in Michigan alone, there were 8,176 reported cases of cyclosporiasis, the gastrointestinal illness caused by Cyclospora, since June 22. Based on Cyclospora’s typical lifespan and contamination cycle, cyclosporiasis infections usually increase in early summer and drop off by August. “It is my understanding that multiple cyclosporiasis outbreaks are taking place simultaneously,” she says. And even once the outbreaks come to an end, Bagdasarian says, she hopes they bring public and government awareness to the needs of state public health systems.

Today:
SpaceX launches Starship on successful test flight
NEWS | 29 July 2026
On Thursday SpaceX pulled off the second consecutive successful test flight of its Starship megarocket. The Starlink satellites are the same as those SpaceX is planning to use to further build out its orbital broadband Internet constellation. Alone in space, Starship also showed improvements over its last test flight, successfully reigniting one of its six Raptor engines for a brief burn. The spacecraft didn’t attempt this feat during its previous test flight in May because the Raptor engine shut down prematurely during launch. After deploying its satellites, Starship splashed down successfully north of Australia in the Indian Ocean, although it did briefly catch fire in the water.

Top Stories:
What OpenAI’s rogue agent really did in the Hugging Face hack
NEWS | 29 July 2026
Headlines described the agent as having gone “rogue”—language that suggests it rebelled or became malicious. The agent found an unexpected route out of the environment, which was intended to be isolated, reached the Internet and broke into Hugging Face to obtain hidden answers to the benchmark. Neither OpenAI nor Hugging Face immediately responded to requests for comment for this article. The breach also raises questions about how closely OpenAI monitored the agent as it carried out thousands of actions. “I do think this incident will be seen, in retrospect, as an inflection point in AI safety,” Saxe says.

World:
NHTSA considers new car door safety rules after fatal Tesla crashes
NEWS | 29 July 2026
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is considering new car-door safety rules after reports that people were unable to escape burning Teslas. On July 24 NHTSA denied a citizen’s request, filed last November, that the agency initiate a safety defect investigation into 2022 Tesla Model 3s. In its decision, NHTSA said the issue would be better addressed through a broader rulemaking process than through a defect investigation. The agency is now considering a new rule mandating a “robust and obvious door egress system” in all cars. NHTSA could move faster on door safety, but “this is really the first step in what very likely will be a very long journey,” he says.

Current Events:
Fungus-made fashion—researchers turn living organisms into textiles
NEWS | 29 July 2026
A detailed view of a garment incorporating fungal textile panels with an aerial-hyphae surface layer. The structured fungal surface provides water-repellent and self-cleaning properties. A full-length garment incorporating fungal textile components produced using the programmable fungal platform described in a new study. The result was a supple, living textile. Keeping the new material alive also isn’t easy—it needs to be stored in certain conditions to prevent contamination, for example.

Sponsored:
Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 29 July 2026
SmartSync is a mobile application, compatible with any Android smartphone, that syncs your important data to your email. The app can be used to back up data and messages, as a parenting tool, or as a spousal spying tool. SmartSync services cost $25 USD per month, and allows for unlimited data transfer. The app can be found Here