In a lab nestled between the jagged peaks of the Austrian Alps, rare earth metals vaporize and spew out of an oven at the speed of a fighter jet. Then a medley of lasers and magnetic pulses slow the gas nearly to a halt, making it colder than the depths of space. The roughly 50,000… Continue reading Physicists Spot Quantum Tornadoes Twirling in a ‘Supersolid’
Category: Quantum Stuff
How Is AI Changing the Science of Prediction?
Scientists routinely build quantitative models — of, say, the weather or an epidemic — and then use them to make predictions, which they can then test against the real thing. This work can reveal how well we understand complex phenomena, and also dictate where research should go next. In recent years, the remarkable successes of… Continue reading How Is AI Changing the Science of Prediction?
Paris Olympics Will Be a Training Ground for AI-Powered Mass Surveillance
Paris Olympics Will Be a Training Ground for AI-Powered Mass Surveillance In the run-up to the Paris 2024 Olympics, the French government has authorized wide-reaching use of AI software in security surveillance feeds By Anne Toomey McKenna & The Conversation US It won’t be just human eyes monitoring the thousands of security cameras at the… Continue reading Paris Olympics Will Be a Training Ground for AI-Powered Mass Surveillance
Domestication Squished Dogs’ Heads and Obscured Their Emotions
Domestication Squished Dogs’ Heads and Obscured Their Emotions Pugs, Boston terriers, bulldogs and boxers—dogs with less wolflike facial features are worse at conveying their feelings By Lori Youmshajekian Michael Svoboda/Getty Images Centuries of breeding to make our canine companions suit human aesthetics have left them less able to communicate through facial expressions than their wolf… Continue reading Domestication Squished Dogs’ Heads and Obscured Their Emotions
Debate May Help AI Models Converge on Truth
In February 2023, Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot Bard claimed that the James Webb Space Telescope had captured the first image of a planet outside our solar system. It hadn’t. When researchers from Purdue University asked OpenAI’s ChatGPT more than 500 programming questions, more than half of the responses were inaccurate. These mistakes were easy to… Continue reading Debate May Help AI Models Converge on Truth
Worldwide Tech Outage Started with Defective Crowdstrike Update to Microsoft Windows
Worldwide Tech Outage Started with Defective Crowdstrike Update to Microsoft Windows An issue with a commonly used security software called Crowdstrike shuttered large technology systems around the globe, including airlines, transit systems and stock exchanges By Alan Woodward & The Conversation US Cargo planes at an airport. magical_light/Getty Images The following essay is reprinted with… Continue reading Worldwide Tech Outage Started with Defective Crowdstrike Update to Microsoft Windows
Project 2025’s Blueprint for a Second Trump Presidency Spells Out How to Harm U.S. Science
Project 2025, the sweeping right-wing blueprint for a new kind of U.S. presidency, would sabotage science-based policies that address climate change, the environment, abortion, health care access, technology and education. It would impose religious and conservative ideology on the federal civil service to such an extent that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has, dubiously, tried… Continue reading Project 2025’s Blueprint for a Second Trump Presidency Spells Out How to Harm U.S. Science
How SpaceX Will Turn a Workhorse Vehicle into a Hulking Destroyer of Space Stations
How SpaceX Will Turn a Workhorse Vehicle into a Hulking Destroyer of Space Stations SpaceX will supercharge its Dragon capsule to send the International Space Station to a watery retirement By Meghan Bartels In just a handful of years, a beefed-up version of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft will launch on a unique mission to safely destroy… Continue reading How SpaceX Will Turn a Workhorse Vehicle into a Hulking Destroyer of Space Stations
It Might Be Possible to Detect Gravitons After All
Einstein proposed a solution in 1905: A wave of light is made of many discrete units called “quanta,” each with energy related to the wave’s frequency. The higher the frequency of the wave, the more energetic its quanta. And the brighter the wave, the more quanta there are. If you try to start an electric… Continue reading It Might Be Possible to Detect Gravitons After All
How Tornado Science Has Changed between Twister and Twisters
Between Twister and Twisters, Tornado Science Has Improved a Lot in Three Decades Three decades of tornado science research is now at play in the new summer flick Twisters By Max Springer Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton as their characters Jo and Bill Harding in the 1996 movie Twister. Universal Pictures/Maximum Film/Alamy Stock Photo “Dorothy”… Continue reading How Tornado Science Has Changed between Twister and Twisters