Brain Pleasers

“I don’t read it since most of it goes WAY over my head,” TARA MALLEN writes of QUANTA MAGAZINE. “But I appreciate the beautiful illustrations.” There’s plenty more to appreciate in this little micro-press mag, too. Tara serves up quirky, curiosityquenching ahas, from Instagram comics to wild and wacky hotels. But Quanta, frankly, is a fountain of originality.

On its face, Quanta is a science publication with verticals across physics, mathematics, biology, computer science, and more. The pub’s interested in the particulars of particles and gestures at conjecture. Perusing its pages, you’ll find aggregations of integers, schemes and schemas, mathematical proofs and mechanical laws. Honestly, how much of this did we actually cover in AP Bio? Stories greet you with close-ups of sea sponge genes and guesswork on geometric puzzles. And the content lends a crash course in the cosmos, a studied survey of phenomena on the microscopic scale. To the laywoman’s eyes, Quanta’s premises offer more questions than answers. What exactly are wavelets? Who’s a biased polynomial? And since when could a number be, as one headline suggests, transcendental? If we can be truthful, it’s more than just numbers that transcend here.

ART BY MAGGIE CHIANG FOR QUANTA MAGAZINE

SURPRISING LIMITS DISCOVERED IN QUEST FOR OPTIMAL SOLUTIONS!, the magazine trumpets. NEW MATH BOOK RESCUES LANDMARK TOPOLOGY PROOF! ‘IMPOSSIBLE’ PARTICLE DISCOVERY ADDS KEY PIECE TO THE STRONG FORCE PUZZLE!There are a lot of puzzles, actually. Numerical, neutrino, Newtonian: scroll away, then try to figure out what any of them mean.

“Our work often resembles journalistic alchemy — we mash together the complexities of science with the malleable art of storytelling in an attempt to forge a precious new alloy,” the editors write on their manifesto of an About page. “It can be a mind-bending enterprise, but we relish the challenge.” Amidst the bends and the malleations, we’re reminded of the surprise you can find by stretching your mind a little further into the abstruse. There’s creative pleasure to be discovered with a reach.