Category: Quantum Stuff

This loss is a fundamental aspect of how computers operate. For example, when a computer adds two numbers together, it returns a single number for the total: 2 + 2 = 4. There’s a loss of information as you go from two numbers to one. You could have added 2 and 2, or you could… Continue reading How Can AI Researchers Save Energy? By Going Backward.

A strain of bird flu never seen before in the United States has been detected among poultry at a California farm. The virus, called highly pathogenic H5N9, is a type of avian influenza, otherwise known as “bird flu.” This is not the same type of bird flu that’s already been spreading on dairy cow and… Continue reading A Second Type of Bird Flu is Circulating in U.S. Ducks—What to Know

Coulson, who was a graduate student with Staples and Guglielmo at the time, led a study on the yellow-rumped warbler, a songbird that migrates between Canada, where it nests, and its wintering grounds in the United States, Mexico and the Caribbean. First, during the birds’ fall migration, they captured the southbound songbirds and brought them… Continue reading ‘Turbocharged’ Mitochondria Power Birds’ Epic Migratory Journeys

One of the most important classes goes by the humble name “P.” Roughly speaking, it encompasses all problems that can be solved in a reasonable amount of time. An analogous complexity class for space is dubbed “PSPACE.” The relationship between these two classes is one of the central questions of complexity theory. Every problem in… Continue reading For Algorithms, a Little Memory Outweighs a Lot of Time

February 6, 2025 5 min read Why Elon Musk’s ‘Fork in the Road’ Is Really a Dead End Elon Musk’s Fork in the Road isn’t just a sculpture—it’s a monument to the tech world’s obsession with civilizational survival, which has its roots in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence By Rebecca Charbonneau Unlike the Sistine Chapel–esque… Continue reading Here’s Why Elon Musk’s ‘Fork in the Road’ Is Really a Dead End

February 5, 2025 4 min read To Find Life on Mars, Make Microbes Wiggle Could tiny swimming microbes help us unlock the mysteries of extraterrestrial life? By Gayoung Lee edited by Lee Billings A color-enhanced microscopic view of Bacillus subtilis bacteria, rod-shaped extremophile microbes commonly found in soil and in the guts of cows and… Continue reading To Find Life on Mars, Make Microbes Wiggle

The simplest ideas in mathematics can also be the most perplexing. Take addition. It’s a straightforward operation: One of the first mathematical truths we learn is that 1 plus 1 equals 2. But mathematicians still have many unanswered questions about the kinds of patterns that addition can give rise to. “This is one of the… Continue reading Graduate Student Solves Classic Problem About the Limits of Addition

In the mid-1950s Marthe Gautier, a young French doctor and cytogenetics researcher, led a cutting-edge experiment to investigate the cause of Down syndrome. She painstakingly cultured cells in a ramshackle lab until one day she discovered an extra chromosome in the cells of people with Down syndrome. This proved beyond a doubt that Down syndrome… Continue reading Who Discovered the Cause of Down Syndrome?

The Quanta Podcast is your weekly dispatch from the frontiers of science and mathematics. As editor in chief of the magazine, every day I am blown away by the passion and knowledge of our writers and editors. So in each episode of our new podcast, I will be speaking with them to dig into some of… Continue reading Introducing The Quanta Podcast | Quanta Magazine

After her adventures in Wonderland, the fictional Alice stepped through the mirror above her fireplace in Lewis Carroll’s 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass to discover how the reflected realm differed from her own. She found that the books were all written in reverse, and the people were “living backwards,” navigating a world where effects preceded… Continue reading How the Universe Differs From Its Mirror Image