Imagine standing under the starry vault, bundled against the cold, when the sky erupts overhead. Rippling curtains, ribbons and streamers of colors across the rainbow light up the night, shimmering and majestic and all eerily silent. That’s what it’s like to see a vivid auroral display, and being able to witness one for yourself is… Continue reading How to Watch the Northern Lights and Other Awesome Auroras
Category: Quantum Stuff
The AI Boom Could Use a Shocking Amount of Electricity
Every online interaction relies on a scaffolding of information stored in remote servers—and those machines, stacked together in data centers worldwide, require a lot of energy. Around the globe, data centers currently account for about 1 to 1.5 percent of global electricity use, according to the International Energy Agency. And the world’s still-exploding boom in… Continue reading The AI Boom Could Use a Shocking Amount of Electricity
Icy Oceans Exist on Far-Off Moons. Why Aren’t They Frozen Solid?
They’d based their prediction on the orbital dance of Jupiter’s largest moons. For every four orbits that Io completes, Europa makes two and Ganymede one. This orbital configuration, known as a resonance, causes Io to wobble back and forth, making its orbit elliptical. When Io is closer to Jupiter, the planet’s gravity yanks on it… Continue reading Icy Oceans Exist on Far-Off Moons. Why Aren’t They Frozen Solid?
The Mathematician Who Shaped String Theory
Eugenio Calabi was known to his colleagues as an inventive mathematician — “transformatively original,” as his former student Xiuxiong Chen put it. In 1953, Calabi began to contemplate a class of shapes that nobody had ever envisioned before. Other mathematicians thought their existence was impossible. But a couple of decades later, these same shapes became… Continue reading The Mathematician Who Shaped String Theory
Thirty Years Later, a Speed Boost for Quantum Factoring
Finding Factors Quantum computers derive their power from the peculiar way they process information. Classical computers use bits, each of which must always be in one of two states, labeled 0 and 1. Quantum bits, or “qubits,” can additionally be in combinations of their 0 and 1 states — a phenomenon called superposition. It’s also… Continue reading Thirty Years Later, a Speed Boost for Quantum Factoring
These Cells Spark Electricity in the Brain. They’re Not Neurons.
A brain is nothing if not communicative. Neurons are the chatterboxes of this conversational organ, and they speak with one another by exchanging pulses of electricity using chemical messengers called neurotransmitters. By repeating this process billions of times per second, a brain converts clusters of chemicals into coordinated actions, memories and thoughts. Researchers study how… Continue reading These Cells Spark Electricity in the Brain. They’re Not Neurons.
Bed Bugs and Influencers Spark Pest Panic in Paris. Here’s What You Need to Know
It was hard to miss the dire headlines: bed bugs were reportedly all over Paris during the city’s Fashion Week, from the metro to a high-end restaurant. As fashionistas made their way home—and in light of the fact that Paris has been preparing to host the Olympics next summer—people asked, why did this happen all… Continue reading Bed Bugs and Influencers Spark Pest Panic in Paris. Here’s What You Need to Know
The Quest to Quantify Quantumness
In other words, he showed that an entanglement-free quantum circuit was easy to simulate on a classical computer. In a computational sense, the circuit wasn’t intrinsically quantum. The collection of all such non-entangling circuits (or, equivalently, all arrangements of qubits that might come out of these non-entangling circuits) formed something of a classically simulable island… Continue reading The Quest to Quantify Quantumness
Climate Change Is Making Saltwater Intrusion Worse in Coastal Areas
The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Seawater intrusion is the movement of saline water from the ocean or estuaries into freshwater systems. The seawater that has crept up the Mississippi River in the summer and early fall of 2023 is a reminder that coastal communities teeter… Continue reading Climate Change Is Making Saltwater Intrusion Worse in Coastal Areas
Scientists Argue Conservation Is under Threat in Indonesia
Christopher Intagliata: For Science, Quickly, I’m Christopher Intagliata. Indonesia’s more than 17,000 islands contain the largest expanse of tropical rain forest in Southeast Asia. And they’re teeming with biodiversity. [CLIP: Sound of hiking through the jungle] Erik Meijaard: These forests are just incredibly rich. Intagliata: Conservation scientist Erik Meijaard has worked for more than three… Continue reading Scientists Argue Conservation Is under Threat in Indonesia