Category: Quantum Stuff

Last March, Iowa State University mathematicians Leslie Hogben and Carolyn Reinhart received a welcome surprise. Adam Wagner, a postdoctoral fellow at Tel Aviv University, emailed to let them know he’d answered a question they’d published the week before — though not by any of the usual math or brute-force computing techniques. Instead, he used a… Continue reading In New Math Proofs, Artificial Intelligence Plays to Win

Billions of years ago, some unknown location on the sterile, primordial Earth became a cauldron of complex organic molecules from which the first cells emerged. Origin-of-life researchers have proposed countless imaginative ideas about how that occurred and where the necessary raw ingredients came from. Some of the most difficult to account for are proteins, the… Continue reading Peptides on Stardust May Have Provided a Shortcut to Life

It was 1973 when a war between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led Saudi Arabia and other oil producers to impose an embargo on crude shipments to the United States. Oil prices soared, and the way the world consumed energy changed. France built a fleet of nuclear power plants. Japan did, too; it… Continue reading Will the Russian Invasion Accelerate Peak Oil?

Tanya Lewis: Hi, and welcome to COVID, Quickly, a Scientific American podcast series. Josh Fischman: This is your fast-track update on the COVID pandemic. We bring you up to speed on the science behind the most urgent questions about the virus and the disease. We demystify the research and help you understand what it really… Continue reading The Push to Move Past the Pandemic: COVID Quickly, Episode 25

Earth without its moon is like macaroni without cheese, Bert without Ernie, Batman without Robin. The moon has been at the center of timekeeping for millennia—it’s at the origin of our months (formerly “moonths”), and some calendars are still lunar-based. Plus, the moon has a strong gravitational effect on Earth. The ocean’s tides are mostly… Continue reading The Moon Is Underrated

People around the world watched via livestreamed security camera as Russian forces attacked and took over Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant—the largest in Europe—on Friday morning local time. Amid the shelling and gunfire, a fire broke out at a training facility in the complex and was later extinguished, according to news reports. The incident raised… Continue reading The Risks of Russian Attacks near Ukraine’s Nuclear Power Plants

Two months before the Super Bowl, the Omicron surge was decimating NFL rosters as players tested positive for COVID. In mid-December, the NFL postponed a game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Seattle Seahawks because the Rams, who would go on to win the Super Bowl, had 29 players out with COVID. The number… Continue reading Making COVID Tests Better at Detecting Infectious People

In an episode of the satirical comedy The Great, the reign of the reason-and-science-loving Russian empress Catherine nearly collapses when her husband Peter, the deposed emperor, storms into her private quarters, determined to imprison her. But seeing her tearful and in despair, he forgets his vindictiveness and hugs her. Later, he tells her, “I wanted… Continue reading Love Is Biological Bribery

Number theorists are always looking for hidden structure. And when confronted by a numerical pattern that seems unavoidable, they test its mettle, trying hard — and often failing — to devise situations in which a given pattern cannot appear. One of the latest results to demonstrate the resilience of such patterns, by Thomas Bloom of… Continue reading Math’s ‘Oldest Problem Ever’ Gets a New Answer

Explore The brain is often called a black box but any neuroscientist who has looked inside knows that’s a sobering understatement. Technological advances are making our neural circuitries increasingly accessible, allowing us to closely watch any number of neurons in action. And yet the mystery of the brain only deepens. What’s the meaning embedded in… Continue reading AI Is Helping Scientists Explain the Brain