Category: Quantum Stuff

What Causes Glaciers to Collapse like the Event That Buried a Swiss Village? Climate change and thawing permafrost play a role in destabilizing glaciers By Jen Schwartz edited by Dean Visser The small village of Blatten in the Swiss Alps was largely destroyed by a landslide that occurred as a result of the partial collapse… Continue reading What Causes Glaciers to Collapse like the Event That Buried a Swiss Village?

For Martin Schrimpf, the promise of artificial intelligence is not in the tasks it can accomplish. It’s in what AI might reveal about human intelligence. He is working to build a “digital twin” of the brain using artificial neural networks — AI models loosely inspired by how neurons communicate with one another. That end goal… Continue reading How AI Models Are Helping to Understand — and Control — the Brain

Last winter, at a meeting in the Finnish wilderness high above the Arctic Circle, a group of mathematicians gathered to contemplate the fate of a mathematical universe. It was minus 20 degrees Celsius, and while some went cross-country skiing, Juan Aguilera, a set theorist at the Vienna University of Technology, preferred to linger in the… Continue reading Is Mathematics Mostly Chaos or Mostly Order?

Sahara Dust Clouds Are Heading to Florida and Beyond Clouds of dust blown off the Saharan Desert into the southeastern U.S. could affect local weather and make sunrises and sunsets particularly vivid By Meghan Bartels edited by Dean Visser Each year, seasonal winds carry tens of millions of tons of Saharan dust across the Atlantic… Continue reading Sahara Dust Clouds Are Heading to Florida and Beyond

Megalodon Diets, Teeth Sensitivity and a Bunch of Vaccine News It’s one step forward and two steps back for vaccine policy in the U.S. Plus, we discuss the fishy origins of sensitive teeth and megalodon diets. By Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi & Alex Sugiura Anaissa Ruiz Tejada/Scientific American Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! It may… Continue reading Are Ancient Fish Responsible for Your Sensitive Teeth?

AI Found a ‘Magic Potion’ That Can Bring Dead Batteries Back to Life Electric vehicles leave behind mountains of dead lithium-ion batteries. A new “injection” brings them back to life By You Xiaoying edited by Andrea Thompson Malte Mueller/Getty Images A team of researchers in China has found a way to bring dead lithium-ion batteries… Continue reading AI Found a ‘Magic Potion’ That Can Bring Dead Batteries Back to Life

Black Death Plague That Killed Millions Became Less Fatal because of This Genetic Tweak Reducing the copies of one gene in the bubonic plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, made it less deadly but potentially more transmissible By Rachel Fieldhouse & Nature magazine Scanning electron micrograph of Yersinia pestis, which causes bubonic plague, on proventricular spines of a Xenopsylla… Continue reading Black Death Plague That Killed Millions Became Less Fatal because of This Genetic Tweak

Often likened to mermaids in media reports and popular culture, South Korea’s famed Haenyeo (“sea women”) spend much of the day underwater, diving without scuba gear to collect abalone, octopus, kelp and other prized seafood. Admired both culturally and scientifically, they have been plunging into the frigid waters of Jeju Island since as early as… Continue reading These ‘Real-Life Mermaid’ Divers Hold Genetic Clues to Enduring Extreme Environments

Imagine a clock: If the hour hand starts at 10 and four hours pass, the clock will point to 2. But clock arithmetic can be done with any number, not just (as in the case of real-world clocks) the number 12. Boxer, Calegari, Gee and Pilloni only needed to show that their two sets of… Continue reading The Core of Fermat’s Last Theorem Just Got Superpowered