Bookmarks (39)

Quantum calculations amount to sophisticated estimates. But in 1931, Hans Bethe intuited precisely how a chain of particles would behave — an insight that had far-reaching consequences. The post How Hans Bethe Stumbled Upon Perfect Quantum Theories first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Emmy Noether showed that fundamental physical laws are just a consequence of simple symmetries. A century later, her insights continue to shape physics. The post How Noether’s Theorem Revolutionized Physics first appeared on Quanta Magazine

By treating DNA as a language, Brian Hie’s “ChatGPT for genomes” could pick up patterns that humans can’t see, accelerating biological design. The post The Poetry Fan Who Taught an LLM to Read and Write DNA first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Recent results show that large language models struggle with compositional tasks, suggesting a hard limit to their abilities. The post Chatbot Software Begins to Face Fundamental Limitations first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Under the sea ice during the Arctic’s pitch-black polar night, cells power photosynthesis on the lowest light levels ever observed in nature. The post How Does Life Happen When There’s Barely Any Light? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Is the universe flat and infinite, or something more complex? We can’t say for sure, but a new search strategy is mapping out the subtle signals that could reveal if the universe had a shape. The post Cosmologists Try a New Way to Measure the Shape of the Universe first appeared on Quanta Magazine

In the late 19th century, Karl Weierstrass invented a fractal-like function that was decried as nothing less than a “deplorable evil.” In time, it would transform the foundations of mathematics. The post The Jagged, Monstrous Function That Broke Calculus first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Individual cells in the brain light up for specific ideas. These concept neurons, once known as “Jennifer Aniston cells,” help us think, imagine and remember episodes from our lives. The post Concept Cells Help Your Brain Abstract Information and Build Memories first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Heat is supposed to ruin anything it touches. But physicists have shown that an idealized form of magnetism is heatproof. The post Heat Destroys All Order. Except for in This One Special Case. first appeared on Quanta Magazine

A new proof marks the first progress in decades on important cases of the so-called kissing problem. Getting there meant doing away with traditional approaches. The post Mathematicians Discover New Way for Spheres to ‘Kiss’ first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Certain grammatical rules never appear in any known language. By constructing artificial languages that have these rules, linguists can use neural networks to explore how people learn. The post Can AI Models Show Us How People Learn? Impossible Languages Point a Way. first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Inside the proton, quarks and gluons shift and morph their properties in ways that physicists are still struggling to understand. Rithya Kunnawalkam Elayavalli brings to the problem a perspective unlike many of their peers. The post The Physicist Decoding the Nonbinary Nature of the Subatomic World first appeared on Quanta Magazine

It’s surprisingly difficult to prove one of the most basic properties of a number: whether it can be written as a fraction. A broad new method can help settle this ancient question. The post Rational or Not? This Basic Math Question Took Decades to Answer. first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Hypothetical devices that can quickly and accurately answer questions have become a powerful tool in computational complexity theory. The post Why Computer Scientists Consult Oracles first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Evolution was fueled by endosymbiosis, cellular alliances in which one microbe makes a permanent home inside another. For the first time, biologists made it happen in the lab. The post Scientists Re-Create the Microbial Dance That Sparked Complex Life first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Biologists used artificial intelligence to make discoveries about molecules and the brain, and overturned long-held assumptions about the immune system and RNA. The post The Year in Biology first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Physicists discovered strange supersolids, constructed new kinds of superconductors, and continued to make the case that the cosmos is far weirder than anyone suspected. The post The Year in Physics first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Landmark results in geometry and number theory marked an exciting year for mathematics, at a time when advances in artificial intelligence are starting to transform the subject’s future. The post The Year in Math first appeared on Quanta Magazine

To make progress on one of number theory’s most elementary questions, two mathematicians turned to an unlikely source. The post Mathematicians Uncover a New Way to Count Prime Numbers first appeared on Quanta Magazine

In a first, researchers have shown that adding more “qubits” to a quantum computer can make it more resilient. It’s an essential step on the long road to practical applications. The post Quantum Computers Cross Critical Error Threshold first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Cells in our bodies are constantly dying — and these countless tiny deaths are essential to human health and multicellular life itself. In this episode, co-host Steven Strogatz speaks with cellular biologist Shai Shaham about what makes a cell “alive” and the latest developments in understanding how and why cells die. The post How Is Cell Death Essential to Life? first appeared on Quanta...

While some fret about technology’s social impacts, Raj Reddy still believes in the power of artificial intelligence to improve lives. The post The AI Pioneer With Provocative Plans for Humanity first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Three high schoolers and their mentor revisited a century-old theorem to prove that all knots can be found in a fractal called the Menger sponge. The post Teen Mathematicians Tie Knots Through a Mind-Blowing Fractal first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Our computers can get a lot more done when they share the load with other machines. The post What Is Distributed Computing? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The reference frames from which observers view quantum events can themselves have multiple possible locations at once — an insight with potentially major ramifications. The post In the Quantum World, Even Points of View Are Uncertain first appeared on Quanta Magazine

We often consider spoken language to be a feature that distinguishes humans from other forms of animal life. Brain research, however, suggests that other creatures — including certain birds — share some of our neural circuitry related to language. In this episode, co-host Janna Levin explores the origins and underlying mechanisms of human speech and birdsong with neurobiologist and geneticist Erich Jarvis. The post...

The mathematician David Bessis claims that everyone is capable of, and can benefit greatly from, mathematical thinking. The post Mathematical Thinking Isn’t What You Think It Is first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The security system that underlies the internet makes use of a curious fact: You can broadcast part of your encryption to make your information much more secure. The post How Public Key Cryptography Really Works, Using Only Simple Math first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Wherever astronomers look, they see life’s raw materials. The post The Cosmos Teems with Complex Organic Molecules first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Two mathematicians have renewed a debate about the fundamental nature of some of math’s most important equations. The post New Elliptic Curve Breaks 18-Year-Old Record first appeared on Quanta Magazine

How do we know if a large language model is lying? Letting AI systems argue with each other may help expose the truth. The post Debate May Help AI Models Converge on Truth first appeared on Quanta Magazine

With lots of data, a strong model and statistical thinking, scientists can make predictions about all sorts of complex phenomena. Today, this practice is evolving to harness the power of machine learning and massive datasets. In this episode, co-host Steven Strogatz speaks with statistician Emmanuel Candès about black boxes, uncertainty and the power of inductive reasoning. The post How Is AI Changing the Science...

New observations of microscopic vortices confirm the existence of a paradoxical phase of matter that may also arise inside neutron stars. The post Physicists Spot Quantum Tornadoes Twirling in a ‘Supersolid’ first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Yizhi “Patrick” Cai is coordinating a global effort to write a complete synthetic yeast genome. If he succeeds, the resulting cell will be the artificial life most closely related to humans to date. The post He’s Gleaning the Design Rules of Life to Re-Create It first appeared on Quanta Magazine

It was intuitive, even obvious. It was also wrong. The post Math’s ‘Bunkbed Conjecture’ Has Been Debunked first appeared on Quanta Magazine

A new experimental proposal suggests detecting a particle of gravity is far easier than anyone imagined. Now physicists are debating what it would really prove. The post It Might Be Possible to Detect Gravitons After All first appeared on Quanta Magazine

All modern multicellular life — all life that any of us regularly see — is made of cells with a knack for compartmentalization. Recent discoveries are revealing how the first eukaryote got its start. The post Meet the Eukaryote, the First Cell to Get Organized first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The idea of a species is fundamental to the way that many people understand the structure of life on Earth. But ask 10 specialists how they define the concept and you might get 10 answers. In this episode, co-host Janna Levin speaks with evolutionary biologist Kevin de Queiroz about what makes defining and delineating species such a slippery process, and why it matters to...