Hi Reader, last Friday’s Maths Challenge proved that the Ve community has serious puzzle-solving skills. We watched thousands of you tackle the challenge with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for major sporting events. For those who signed up to see how you stacked up, you'll find our team's average score and how the other percentiles performed down below.

Coming up this week:

🧊 The hidden physics behind slippery ice
🛜 Could this glass-straw fiber boost internet speed by 1000x?
🏈 4.7 Billion-Year-Old Asteroid Reveals Mineral That Doesn't Exist on Earth
​+More

PHYSICS

Scientists challenge 200-year-old theory on why ice is slippery

Why do we slip when we walk on icy sidewalks? For two centuries, the leading explanations were straightforward: pressure from shoes or skis melts a thin layer of ice, while friction from motion adds heat, making the surface slippery.

But new research suggests that this theory may not hold up. The researchers used advanced molecular simulations to probe ice surfaces. They found that when a boot sole, skate blade, or ski presses against ice, it’s the dipoles, tiny electric polarities in the molecules, that clash. These interactions “frustrate” the neat crystal lattice, turning it amorphous and liquid-like even at extreme cold. The process, called cold displacement-driven amorphization, produces the lubricating layer that makes skating, skiing, and slipping possible. The findings were published in Physical Review Letters.

This challenges a 200-year-old idea popularized by James Thomson, Lord Kelvin’s brother, who argued that pressure melting explained the effect. It also challenges the idea that no lubricating film can form below -40°C. The film does exist, but it becomes so viscous that skiing or skating at that temperature isn’t possible. The discovery could inform designs for safer tires, boots, and anti-icing coatings, and rewrite one of the most familiar examples in physics.

TL;DR: Physicists found ice’s slipperiness comes from dipole-driven disordering, not pressure melting, overturning a 200-year-old explanation.

TECHNOLOGY

New fiber could make the internet faster and more efficient

Could your home internet get way faster? A breakthrough in fiber optics might make that a reality.

For decades, our internet has depended on silica-based optical fibers, glass threads that guide pulses of light. But these fibers have barely improved on one key measure in nearly 40 years: attenuation, the gradual fading of signal strength as light travels. Standard optical fibers lose about half the signal every 15–20 km. The lower the loss, the further data can move without expensive amplification, meaning faster, more efficient networks.

Researchers might have found a solution in the form of a hollow-core fiber that steers light through air rather than glass. Their findings, published in Nature Photonics, show that the design cuts transmission loss to 0.091 dB/km (better than the ~0.14 dB/km limit of conventional fibers), and allows photons to travel nearly 45% faster. Crucially, by keeping light out of the glass, it can tolerate around 1,000 times more optical power before distortion, a huge leap for high-capacity networks. It’s the first hollow-core design to beat solid glass on both speed and loss, a milestone in waveguiding technology. The implications are far-reaching. Internet backbones could become more efficient and responsive. Quantum networks, which depend on transmitting single photons, could scale. Microsoft has already installed 1,200 km of fiber in its Azure network, with 15,000 km planned, an early glimpse of the changes to come.

TL;DR: Researchers built a hollow-core fiber that cuts loss to record lows, boosts light speed by 45%, and tolerates 1,000× more optical power, potentially boosting internet speeds.

ASTRONOMY

Asteroid Ryugu Reveals Rare Mineral Never Seen on Earth

We know the basic ingredients for life - carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus - but how they reached early Earth remains a puzzle. Phosphorus, critical for DNA and energy storage, is particularly scarce in space yet abundant in living things.

Scientists analyzing 4.7-billion-year-old asteroid Ryugu samples may have found a clue. Using advanced X-ray imaging on two precious grains collected by Japan's Hayabusa2 mission, researchers discovered phosphorus in an unexpected form: a crystalline mineral called hydrated ammonium magnesium phosphate (HAMP) that has never been observed before in Earth’s geology.

​HAMP resembles struvite, a mineral linked to biological processes on our planet, but has a unique structure. The discovery suggests carbonaceous asteroids like Ryugu carried diverse phosphorus compounds through the early solar system, potentially seeding planets with life's building blocks. Unlike Earth, where geological processes have erased ancient chemical records, Ryugu preserves pristine snapshots of our solar system's infancy.

This find reinforces the theory that asteroids delivered essential elements for life to Earth billions of years ago. For astrobiology, HAMP broadens the range of phosphorus compounds scientists can consider in studies of life’s origins. For planetary science, it reveals our solar system's chemistry was far more complex than previously imagined.

TL;DR: Scientists discovered HAMP, a phosphorus mineral that doesn't exist on Earth, in 4.7-billion-year-old asteroid Ryugu samples. This unique find suggests asteroids delivered life's essential building blocks to early Earth and reveals unexpected chemical diversity in our primordial solar system.

Quiz Results

How did you stack up against the other players?
Not played yet? Try the challenge here.

TIME BY PERCENTILE ​
​03:20 (2.5%)
09:25 (10%)
14:50 (25%)
22:05 (50%)
34:50 (75%)​
​16:31 (Team Ve)
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​TOTAL GUESSES BY PERCENTILE ​
​8 (2.5%)
9 (10%)
10 (25%)
12 (50%)
13 (75%)​
​11 (Team Ve)

In other news...

We just detected the brightest radio burst in history. Astronomers caught the brightest fast radio burst ever. In a few milliseconds, the burst - nicknamed RBFLOAT - released as much energy as the Sun emits in four days.

Married couples tend to share the same psychiatric disorders. A massive international study of ~15 million married individuals finds that people with psychiatric diagnoses are significantly more likely to partner with someone with the same mental illness. This romantic matching pattern has implications for their children, where certain conditions can be inherited.

Gels “Remember” How They Were Mixed. Common soft materials - like gels and lotions - retain internal “mechanical memories” of how they were mixed for days. This finding could help manufacturers design longer-lasting products and more durable roads.

A time crystal you can actually see. What if the passage of time could form a visible pattern like a crystal shimmering in motion? Physicists have engineered a time crystal that is directly observable under a microscope and visible to the naked eye under certain lighting.

We measured the pulse of an atom’s magnetic heart for the first time. Using scanning tunneling microscopy, physicists directly watched a single atomic nucleus flip its spin in real time and measured its seconds-long stability.

Interstellar Comet Grows Its Tail. New images from the Gemini South telescope show interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS (which we covered a few weeks ago) has developed a visible tail. It will reach the Sun in late October before departing the Solar System.

This Week in History

Sept 7, 1936. The last Tasmanian tiger died alone at Hobart Zoo. Ironically, the species had gained protected status just 59 days earlier. Today, all surviving footage totals under five minutes, making it one of history's most documented extinctions yet rarest visual records.

Sept 9, 1947. Grace Hopper's Harvard team found their Mark II computer malfunctioning. The culprit? A moth trapped in relay #70. Hopper taped the dead insect into the logbook with the note "First actual case of bug being found," coining the term that every programmer knows today. Fun fact: the actual moth is still preserved at the Smithsonian.

Sept 6, 1978. Scientists at Genentech engineered E. coli bacteria to produce human insulin. The breakthrough ended diabetics' reliance on animal insulin and launched the biotechnology industry. Four years later, Eli Lilly brought "Humulin" to market as the world's first FDA-approved biotech drug.

This Week’s Puzzle

🧩

On a remote island, 100 prisoners all have green eyes. They can see other prisoners’ eye color. But they don’t know their own eye color because there are no mirrors or other reflective material on the island. They cannot communicate.

Each night, prisoners may try to escape. But only green-eyed ones survive; others get thrown into a volcano. They'll only act when absolutely certain they have green eyes.

One day, a visitor to the island truthfully announces to the 100 prisoners: "At least one of you has green eyes."

On the 100th night, all prisoners simultaneously declare they have green eyes and manage to escape.

What happened?

Until next time,

The Ve Team 👋

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Research by Pablo
Written by Ines

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🧩

The key is that the visitor's statement becomes common knowledge: everyone knows that everyone knows this fact.

Before the announcement: Each prisoner sees 99 green-eyed people and thinks "Either there are 99 or 100 green-eyed prisoners (depending on me), but I don't know which."

The visitor's statement doesn't add new information, but it establishes a shared starting point for reasoning:

If there were 1 green-eyed prisoner: They'd see 0 green eyes, realize the visitor meant them, leave night 1.

If there were 2: Each sees 1 green eye. When no one leaves night 1, each thinks "If I weren't green-eyed, that person would've left night 1. Since they didn't, there must be 2 of us." Both leave night 2.

If there are 100: Each sees 99 green eyes. After 99 nights of no departures, each realizes "If I weren't green-eyed, those 99 would have left on night 99 using the same logic. Since they're still here, I must be the 100th."

Without the visitor's announcement, this chain reaction never starts because the prisoners lack a common reference point to begin the elimination process.
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🧩

Correction: Last Week's Puzzle

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A few eagle-eyed readers pointed out a potential issue with last week’s puzzle. They’re right.

In the original setup, we stated (in point 2):

“But a lion that eats a zebra becomes drowsy, and a drowsy lion can be eaten by another lion.”

However, in the solution, we assumed that any lion who eats becomes drowsy (whether it eats a zebra or another lion).

As readers pointed out, that omission could make a difference. If only eating a zebra causes drowsiness, then a lion who eats another lion would remain alert and therefore dangerous to other lions.

Thanks to everyone who wrote in to question the logic. We love how many of you think critically about these puzzles. Keep the challenges coming, though we’ll do our best to make sure our puzzles are watertight!

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