Category: Quantum Stuff

Neural networks need to “dream” of weird, senseless examples to learn well. Maybe we do, too.Photo Illustration by MDV Edwards / Shutterstock For many of us over the last year and more, our waking experience has, you might say, lost a bit of its variety. We spend more time with the same people, in our… Continue reading Weird Dreams Train Our Brains to Be Better Learners – Facts So Romantic

I have a new article just out, published as a Rapid Communication in Physical Review B. The work is a computational study co-authored with Duncan Mowbray and Mathias Ljungberg from San Sebastian, Spain, and Paola Ayala from Vienna. As described in the post about my recent review article, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy is an extremely useful tool for studying… Continue reading Calculating the graphene C 1s core level binding energy — Mostly Physics

The photos from a historic flyby of our solar system’s largest moon are starting to roll in. On Monday (June 7), NASA’s Juno probe zoomed within just 645 miles (1,038 kilometers) of Jupiter’s enormous satellite Ganymede, which is bigger than the planet Mercury. It was the closest any probe had come to Ganymede since May 2000, when NASA’s Galileo… Continue reading Ganymede Looks Glorious in New Images from NASA’s Juno Mission

Imagine, then, that every time a new cluster forms, its experience recapitulates this process, with the same differences in the environments of the inner and outer cells driving the same divergent responses. You begin to see how the story of what was once a unicellular creature can be rewritten, its body a palimpsest of what… Continue reading Single Cells Evolve Large Multicellular Forms in Just Two Years

Over the past century, many notable viruses have emerged from animals to cause widespread illness and death in people. The list includes the pathogens behind pandemic influenza, Ebola, Zika, West Nile fever, SARS and now COVID, brought on by the virus SARS-CoV-2. For all of these microbes, the animal species that served as the original source… Continue reading Why We Don’t Know the Animal Origins of the Coronavirus

I have a childhood memory of looking in the bathroom mirror, and for the first time realizing that my experience at that precise moment—the experience of being me—would at some point come to an end, and that “I” would die. I must have been about 8 or 9 years old, and like all early memories… Continue reading We Are Beast Machines – Issue 107: The Edge

NEW YORK HARBOR—It’s an odd scene in New York Harbor. On the banks of tree-lined Governors Island, a small group has gathered to watch a tiny gray boat anchor itself in the water. Two figures lean over the side of the vessel, their red life vests standing out against the slate waves. Each clutches several… Continue reading Saved from Shuckers, Oysters Fight Rising Seas

Consciousness is a thriving industry. It’s not just the meditation retreats and ayahuasca shamans. Or the conferences with a heady mix of philosophers, quantum physicists, and Buddhist monks. Consciousness is a buzzing business in neuroscience labs and brain institutes. But it wasn’t always this way. Just a few decades ago, consciousness barely registered as a… Continue reading The Spiritual Consciousness of Christof Koch – Issue 107: The Edge

Scientific American June 2021 Making peace with the biosphere will require building communities and relationships that are focused on protecting life—human and nonhuman No one in her village faced food shortages during the lockdowns, nor did they suffer from COVID-19, Moligeri Chandramma assured me through an interpreter this past March. A farmer in the drylands… Continue reading These Alternative Economies Are Inspirations for a Sustainable World