Category: Quantum Stuff

September 18, 2025 3 min read Genetics Can Track How Languages Mixed in the Past New research shows that wherever human populations mix, their languages blend as well By Cody Cottier edited by Allison Parshall PhotoHamster/Getty Images When speakers of different languages meet, their words, sounds and even grammatical structures mingle in surprising ways. Ketchup,… Continue reading Languages Have Mixed through History. Our Genes Can Reveal How

Inhibitory neurons have “often been ascribed support roles,” said Annabelle Singer, a neuroscientist and neuroengineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University. That’s likely because it’s simply easier to study excitatory neurons. For example, an excitatory place cell in the hippocampus can fire when an animal is in a particular location. When this… Continue reading How the Brain Balances Excitation and Inhibition

The duo kept their program running in the background for over a decade. During that time, a couple of computers from their ragtag collection succumbed to overheating and even flames. “There was one that actually sent out sparks,” Brittenham said. “That was kind of fun.” (Those machines, he added, were “honorably retired.”) Then, in the… Continue reading A Simple Way To Measure Knots Has Come Unraveled

September 18, 2025 3 min read New AI Tool Predicts Which of 1,000 Diseases Someone May Develop in 20 Years A large language model called Delphi-2M analyzes a person’s medical records and lifestyle to provide risk estimates for more than 1,000 diseases By Gemma Conroy & Nature magazine Boris Zhitkov/Getty Images A new artificial intelligence… Continue reading AI Can Now Predict Your Risk of 1,000 Diseases—Decades Ahead

September 18, 2025 2 min read Strong Earthquake Hits Kamchatka. Tsunami Risk Waning A powerful magnitude 7.8 aftershock off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula that arose from July’s magnitude 8.8 earthquake is raising concerns about possible tsunami impacts, although risk appears to be waning By Meghan Bartels edited by Lee Billings A seismic map shows the epicenter… Continue reading Aftershock Rocks Kamchatka after July’s Massive Earthquake

This episode was made possible by the support of Yakult and produced independently by Scientific American‘s board of editors. Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. If you’ve ever heard a youth say “skibidi” and lamented the downfall of the English language, today’s episode might surprise you. Our guest is Adam Aleksic,… Continue reading ‘Skibidi’ and ‘Brain Rot’ Are Part of Millennia-Old Patterns of Language Evolution

How so? In one recent paper, we used random variation between different training runs to find correlations between models’ internal structure and their generalization behavior. If structure and behavior are correlated across a bunch of random initializations when you control for everything else, it’s likely that they’re actually linked. You can make a much stronger… Continue reading To Understand AI, Watch How It Evolves

September 18, 2025 5 min read How Do You Weigh a Black Hole? Gauging the mass of a black hole is tricky, but astronomers have devised multiple methods to measure the heft of these galactic gluttons By Phil Plait edited by Lee Billings This jagged jumble of pixels may look like a rainbow-colored thunderbolt, but… Continue reading How Do You Weigh a Black Hole?

September 19, 2025 3 min read Astronomers’ Exoplanet Haul Tops 6,000 Alien Worlds It’s a crowded galaxy, the latest exoplanet tally shows By Sarah Lewin Frasier edited by Clara Moskowitz Scientists have found thousands of planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets, throughout the galaxy. This artist’s concept shows how they range in size and… Continue reading Want to Get Away? NASA Now Offers More Than 6,000 Alien Worlds to Daydream About

September 19, 2025 3 min read Writing in Your Books Is Good for Your Brain—Here’s Why Annotating the margins of books is an important part of deep reading and has a long legacy of merit in both science and literature By Brianne Kane edited by Jeanna Bryner Readers on TikTok and Instagram are making the aesthetics… Continue reading The TikTok Trend of Writing in Margins Is Based on Real Neuroscience