Maths that could win you $1 million

In this week’s round-up of the best New Scientist stories, we’ve got a meteorite that seems to have gone on an amazing round trip to space, the science behind weight-loss drugs like Wegovy and a free event for subscribers on how to stay young. Before all of that, it’s a maths story I’ve been writing about for almost my entire career…

Decade-long struggle over maths proof could be decided by $1m prize

In 2012, I wrote about a mathematician’s attempt to solve a fiendish problem about the basics of numbers – and how even experts were struggling to understand his proof. We’ve been reporting on Shinichi Mochizuki and his inter-universal Teichmüller theory ever since, as the maths community has been torn apart over whether it is true. In the latest twist in the tale, a business leader has stumped up a $1 million prize to anyone who can disprove it.

Meteorite left Earth then landed back down after round trip to space

This is such a cool story. An analysis of a meteorite found in the Sahara desert suggests it was blasted into space by an impact hitting the planet, stayed in orbit for thousands of years, then returned to Earth. Not everyone is convinced by the evidence put forward, but, if confirmed, this would be the first known Earth meteorite of its kind.

Record-breaking number of qubits entangled in a quantum computer

Quantum computers continue to make impressive strides towards getting out of the lab and into useful applications. This latest development is about a computer in which the qubits, or quantum bits, are all fully quantum entangled with each other – no mean feat, given the vagaries of quantum physics. It remains to be seen what this actually means for computational performance, however.

More from New Scientist

• This week marks the first anniversary of the James Webb Space Telescope’s science operations, so we’ve rounded up our favourite pictures.
• Our magazine cover story this week is all about weight-loss drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic, along with a host of others you probably haven’t heard of, but will have soon.
• Want to live longer and better? Well, who wouldn’t? To find out how, we’re putting on an online event next month with computational biologist and science writer Andrew Steele. Tickets are free for subscribers.

Thanks for reading and do remember to share this newsletter with your network by hitting the repost button.

Jacob Aron, News Editor

?