Bookmarks (38)

A novel type of “jumping gene” may explain why the genomes of complex cells aren’t all equally stuffed with noncoding sequences. The post How a DNA ‘Parasite’ May Have Fragmented Our Genes first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The prize-winning geometer feels most fulfilled when exploring the fertile ground where constraint meets creation. The post Emmy Murphy Is a Mathematician Who Finds Beauty in Flexibility first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Last fall, a team of physicists announced that they had teleported a qubit through a holographic wormhole in a quantum computer. Now another group suggests that’s not quite what happened. The post Wormhole Experiment Called Into Question first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Large language models like ChatGPT are now big enough that they’ve started to display startling, unpredictable behaviors. The post The Unpredictable Abilities Emerging From Large AI Models first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Cosmologists are using secondary signatures from the cosmic microwave background to map the universe’s hidden matter. The post Shadows in the Big Bang Afterglow Reveal Invisible Cosmic Structures first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Arvind Narayanan uses quantitative methods to expose and correct the misuse of quantitative methods. The post The Researcher Who Would Teach Machines to Be Fair first appeared on Quanta Magazine

By genetically instructing cells to perform tasks that they wouldn’t in nature, synthetic biologists can learn deep secrets about how life works. Steven Strogatz discusses the potential of this young field with researcher Michael Elowitz. The post Can We Program Our Cells? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

A paper in Nature reports the discovery of a superconductor that operates at room temperatures and near-room pressures. The claim has divided the research community. The post Room-Temperature Superconductor Discovery Meets With Resistance first appeared on Quanta Magazine

New calculations suggest that the event horizons around black holes will ‘decohere’ quantum possibilities — even those that are far away. The post Black Holes Will Eventually Destroy All Quantum States, Researchers Argue first appeared on Quanta Magazine

There appear to be too many gamma rays coming from the sun. New higher-energy measurements reveal that this excess continues for a bit, then disappears — a cutoff that could help clarify what’s going on. The post Strange Solar Gamma Rays Discovered at Even Higher Energies first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The quantum energy teleportation protocol was proposed in 2008 and largely ignored. Now two independent experiments have shown that it works. The post Physicists Use Quantum Mechanics to Pull Energy out of Nothing first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Mathematicians have struggled to understand the moduli space of graphs. A new paper uses tools from physics to peek inside. The post Quantum Field Theory Pries Open Mathematical Puzzle first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Is it possible to fill space “cubically” with shapes that act like spheres? A proof at the intersection of geometry and theoretical computer science says yes. The post Mathematicians Complete Quest to Build ‘Spherical Cubes’ first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Richard Feynman’s path integral is both a powerful prediction machine and a philosophy about how the world is. But physicists are still struggling to figure out how to use it, and what it means. The post How Our Reality May Be a Sum of All Possible Realities first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The critical brain hypothesis suggests that neural networks do their best work when connections are not too weak or too strong. The post When Does the Brain Operate at Peak Performance? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Two teams have made photons act as if time were simultaneously flowing in two directions. The experiments demonstrate a way to potentially boost the performance of quantum devices. The post How Quantum Physicists ‘Flipped Time’ (and How They Didn’t) first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Depression has often been blamed on low levels of serotonin in the brain. That answer is insufficient, but alternatives are coming into view and changing our understanding of the disease. The post The Cause of Depression Is Probably Not What You Think first appeared on Quanta Magazine

In three-dimensional space, the surface of a black hole must be a sphere. But a new result shows that in higher dimensions, an infinite number of configurations are possible. The post Mathematicians Find an Infinity of Possible Black Hole Shapes first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Reports that the James Webb Space Telescope killed the reigning cosmological model turn out to have been exaggerated. But astronomers still have much to learn from distant galaxies glimpsed by Webb. The post Standard Model of Cosmology Survives a Telescope’s Surprising Finds first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Mathematicians have uncovered a surprising wealth of rock-paper-scissors-like patterns in randomly chosen dice. The post Mathematicians Roll Dice and Get Rock-Paper-Scissors first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Researchers can now find the shortest route through a network nearly as fast as theoretically possible, even when some steps can cancel out others. The post Finally, a Fast Algorithm for Shortest Paths on Negative Graphs first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Tiny genetic sequences in a mother’s bacteria seem to hop into the infant's bacteria, perhaps ensuring a healthy microbiome later in life. The post Mobile Genes From the Mother Shape the Baby’s Microbiome first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Random circuit sampling, a popular technique for showing the power of quantum computers, doesn’t scale up if errors go unchecked. The post New Algorithm Closes Quantum Supremacy Window first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Diffusion models generate incredible images by learning to reverse the process that, among other things, causes ink to spread through water. The post The Physics Principle That Inspired Modern AI Art first appeared on Quanta Magazine

A new radiation-based mechanism adds to the ways that amino acids could have been made in space and brought to the young Earth. The post Inside Ancient Asteroids, Gamma Rays Made Building Blocks of Life first appeared on Quanta Magazine

On nights and weekends, Justin Gilmer attacked an old question in pure math using the tools of information theory. The post Google Researcher, Long Out of Math, Cracks Devilish Problem About Sets first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Four Fields Medals were awarded for major breakthroughs in geometry, combinatorics, statistical physics and number theory, even as mathematicians continued to wrestle with how computers are changing the discipline. The post The Year in Math first appeared on Quanta Magazine

In a year filled with sweet new observations in astronomy and tantalizing breakthroughs in condensed matter physics, the brand-new space telescope takes the cake. The post The Year in Physics first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Computer scientists this year learned how to transmit perfect secrets, why transformers seem so good at everything, and how to improve on decades-old algorithms (with a little help from AI). The post The Year in Computer Science first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Momentum for new ideas in Alzheimer’s research joined advances in neuroscience, developmental biology and origin-of-life studies to make 2022 a memorable year of biological insights. The post The Year in Biology first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The buckminsterfullerene revolution never came, but some researchers are eagerly exploring the properties of newfound carbon crystals known as fullertubes. The post ‘Fullertubes’ Join the Family of Carbon Crystals first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The ecologist Holly Moeller studies microorganisms that expand their range by absorbing organelles and gaining new metabolic talents from their prey. The post She Finds Keys to Ecology in Cells That Steal From Others first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Mathematicians predicted that if they imposed enough restrictions on how a shape might tile space, they could force a periodic pattern to emerge. But they were wrong. The post ‘Nasty’ Geometry Breaks Decades-Old Tiling Conjecture first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The neural representations of a perceived image and the memory of it are almost the same. New work shows how and why they are different. The post How the Brain Distinguishes Memories From Perceptions first appeared on Quanta Magazine

By using fluids to model inaccessible realms of the cosmos, Silke Weinfurtner is “looking for a deeper truth beyond one system.” But what can such experiments teach us? The post She Turns Fluids Into ‘Black Holes’ and ‘Inflating Universes’ first appeared on Quanta Magazine

After decades in the shadow of the reigning model for Alzheimer’s disease, alternative explanations are finally getting the attention they deserve. The post What Causes Alzheimer’s? Scientists Are Rethinking the Answer. first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Two new studies suggest that certain tetrahedral arrangements of galaxies outnumber their mirror images, potentially reflecting details of the universe’s birth. But confirmation is needed. The post Asymmetry Detected in the Distribution of Galaxies first appeared on Quanta Magazine