Bookmarks (36)

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    First-Year Graduate Student Finds Paradoxical Set

    No two pairs have the same sum; add three numbers together, and you can get any...

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    How Math Has Changed the Shape of Gerrymandering | Quanta Magazine

    New tools make it possible to detect hidden manipulation of maps. The post How Math Has...

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    Data Compression Drives the Internet. Here’s How It Works.

    One student’s desire to get out of a final exam led to the ubiquitous algorithm that...

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    How 3D Changes in the Genome Turned Sharks Into Skates | Quanta Magazine

    Changes in the 3D structure of their genome gave skates and rays their distinctive winglike fins...

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    Is It Real or Imagined? How Your Brain Tells the Difference.

    New experiments show that the brain distinguishes between perceived and imagined mental images by checking whether...

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    Some Neural Networks Learn Language Like Humans | Quanta Magazine

    Researchers uncover striking parallels in the ways that humans and machine learning models acquire language skills....

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    Secret Messages Can Hide in AI-Generated Media | Quanta Magazine

    In steganography, an ordinary message masks the presence of a secret communication. Humans can never do...

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    Are There Reasons to Believe in a Multiverse?

    Several areas of physics suggest reasons to think that unobservable universes with different natural laws could...

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    New Math Shows When Solar Systems Become Unstable | Quanta Magazine

    For the first time, mathematicians have proved that planetary orbits in a solar system will always...

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    The Tiny Physics Behind Immense Cosmic Eruptions | Quanta Magazine

    A new theory describes how particle interactions fuel fast magnetic reconnection, the process behind solar flares...

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    Chatbots Don’t Know What Stuff Isn’t

    Today’s language models are more sophisticated than ever, but they still struggle with the concept of...

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    A Plan to Address the World’s Challenges With Math | Quanta Magazine

    Minhyong Kim is leading a new initiative called Mathematics for Humanity that encourages mathematicians to apply...

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    A Mutation Turned Ants Into Parasites in One Generation

    A new genetics study of ant “social parasites” shows how complex sets of features can emerge...

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    A New Theory for the Assembly of Life in the Universe | Quanta Magazine

    If we want to understand complex constructions, such as ourselves, assembly theory says we must account...

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    Is Perpetual Motion Possible at the Quantum Level? | Quanta Magazine

    A new phase of matter called a “time crystal” plays with our expectations of thermodynamics. The...

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    How a Human Smell Receptor Works Is Finally Revealed | Quanta Magazine

    After decades of frustration, researchers have finally determined how an airborne scent molecule links to a...

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    How Can Some Infinities Be Bigger Than Others? | Quanta Magazine

    All infinities go on forever, so how is it possible for some infinities to be larger...

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    Primitive Asgard Cells Show Life on the Brink of Complexity

    As researchers race to cultivate more of the intriguing cells from the deep seafloor, the few...

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    The Electron Is So Round That It’s Ruling Out New Particles | Quanta Magazine

    If the electron’s charge wasn’t perfectly round, it could reveal the existence of hidden particles. A...

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    ‘Alien Calculus’ Could Save Particle Physics From Infinities | Quanta Magazine

    In the math of particle physics, every calculation should result in infinity. The set of techniques...

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    Hobbyist Finds Math’s Elusive ‘Einstein’ Tile | Quanta Magazine

    The surprisingly simple tile is the first single, connected tile that can fill the entire plane...

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    How a DNA ‘Parasite’ May Have Fragmented Our Genes

    A novel type of “jumping gene” may explain why the genomes of complex cells aren’t all...

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    Astronomers Dig Up the Stars That Birthed the Milky Way

    There once was a cosmic seed that sprouted the Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers have discovered its...

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    Emmy Murphy Is a Mathematician Who Finds Beauty in Flexibility

    The prize-winning geometer feels most fulfilled when exploring the fertile ground where constraint meets creation. The...

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    Wormhole Experiment Called Into Question

    Last fall, a team of physicists announced that they had teleported a qubit through a holographic...

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    The Unpredictable Abilities Emerging From Large AI Models

    Large language models like ChatGPT are now big enough that they’ve started to display startling, unpredictable...

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    Shadows in the Big Bang Afterglow Reveal Invisible Cosmic Structures

    Cosmologists are using secondary signatures from the cosmic microwave background to map the universe’s hidden matter....

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    The Researcher Who Would Teach Machines to Be Fair

    Arvind Narayanan uses quantitative methods to expose and correct the misuse of quantitative methods. The post...

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    Can We Program Our Cells?

    By genetically instructing cells to perform tasks that they wouldn’t in nature, synthetic biologists can learn...

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    Room-Temperature Superconductor Discovery Meets With Resistance | Quanta Magazine

    A paper in Nature reports the discovery of a superconductor that operates at room temperatures and...

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    Black Holes Will Destroy All Quantum States, Researchers Argue | Quanta Magazine

    New calculations suggest that the event horizons around black holes will ‘decohere’ quantum possibilities — even...

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    Strange Solar Gamma Rays Discovered at Even Higher Energies

    There appear to be too many gamma rays coming from the sun. New higher-energy measurements reveal...

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    Physicists Use Quantum Mechanics to Pull Energy out of Nothing

    The quantum energy teleportation protocol was proposed in 2008 and largely ignored. Now two independent experiments...

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    Quantum Field Theory Pries Open Mathematical Puzzle | Quanta Magazine

    Mathematicians have struggled to understand the moduli space of graphs. A new paper uses tools from...

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    Mathematicians Complete Quest to Build ‘Spherical Cubes’

    Is it possible to fill space “cubically” with shapes that act like spheres? A proof at...