Category: Quantum Stuff

For a decade now, many of the most impressive artificial intelligence systems have been taught using a huge inventory of labeled data. An image might be labeled “tabby cat” or “tiger cat,” for example, to “train” an artificial neural network to correctly distinguish a tabby from a tiger. The strategy has been both spectacularly successful… Continue reading Self-Taught AI Shows Similarities to How the Brain Works

Last Friday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced a pivot in its guidelines for indoor mask wearing that suggests that more than two thirds of Americans no longer need to wear masks—including children in schools. “We want to give people a break from things like mask wearing when our levels are low and… Continue reading When Should COVID School Restrictions Lift? Intense Debates Persist

Our recent suite of puzzles featured the humble double-pan balance scale, historically a symbol of commerce and government, art and science. Balance scales are also popular in recreational mathematics. Balance puzzles require clear, logical reasoning and lend themselves well to mathematical generalization. Let’s see how Quanta readers balanced these qualities in the puzzles below. Puzzle… Continue reading Seeking Mathematical Truth in Counterfeit Coin Puzzles

Jim Al-Khalili has an enviable gig. The Iraqi-British scientist gets to ponder some of the deepest questions—What is time? How do nature’s forces work?—while living the life of a TV and radio personality. Al-Khalili hosts The Life Scientific, a show on BBC Radio 4 featuring his interviews with scientists on the impact of their research… Continue reading Thinking Like a Scientist Will Make You Happier

Last year, the particle physicist Lance Dixon was preparing a lecture when he noticed a striking similarity between two formulas that he planned to include in his slides. The formulas, called scattering amplitudes, give the probabilities of possible outcomes of particle collisions. One of the scattering amplitudes represented the probability of two gluon particles colliding… Continue reading Particle Physicists Puzzle Over a New Duality

Quanta Magazine > 0; if (typeof predicate !== ‘function’) { throw new TypeError(‘predicate must be a function’); } var thisArg = arguments[1]; var k = 0; while (k We care about your data, and we’d like to use cookies to give you a smooth browsing experience. Please agree and read more about our privacy policy.Agree… Continue reading The Computer Scientist Trying to Teach AI to Learn Like We Do

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has escalated: Russian troops have invaded and now control several areas in Ukraine. Heavy fighting is raging in some cities, and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has declared martial law. This causes fear and worry to many people in Europe, including children and other young people. But how do you… Continue reading What to Tell Kids about Ukraine: Recommendations from a Psychologist

After the first-ever explosion of an atomic bomb on July 16, 1945 near Socorro, N.M., J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, recited a line from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Less than a month later, a quarter of a million lives were lost to the… Continue reading The Manhattan Project Shows Scientists’ Moral and Ethical Responsibilities

Quanta Magazine > 0; if (typeof predicate !== ‘function’) { throw new TypeError(‘predicate must be a function’); } var thisArg = arguments[1]; var k = 0; while (k We care about your data, and we’d like to use cookies to give you a smooth browsing experience. Please agree and read more about our privacy policy.Agree… Continue reading Geometric Analysis Reveals How Birds Mastered Flight

In 1963, the mathematician Roy Kerr found a solution to Einstein’s equations that precisely described the space-time outside what we now call a rotating black hole. (The term wouldn’t be coined for a few more years.) In the nearly six decades since his achievement, researchers have tried to show that these so-called Kerr black holes… Continue reading Black Holes Finally Proven Mathematically Stable