It took Pearson months to align the resulting 12,500 JWST images of the Orion nebula, pixel by pixel. The formidable task was frustrated by the telescope’s exquisite sensitivity: Many of the faint objects typically used as landmarks blinded JWST’s ultra-sensitive eye. “The brown dwarfs that are normally difficult to see were wiping out bits of… Continue reading Rogue Worlds Throw Planetary Ideas Out of Orbit
Category: Quantum Stuff
During Pregnancy, a Fake ‘Infection’ Protects the Fetus
When you were a child, it seemed like an ingenious plan: Splash hot water on your face and stagger into the kitchen, letting out a moan that could make angels cry. One touch of your flushed forehead would convince your parents to diagnose a fever and keep you home from school. No matter how elaborately… Continue reading During Pregnancy, a Fake ‘Infection’ Protects the Fetus
People Who Speak Backward Reveal the Brain’s Endless Ability to Play with Language
In 2020 Adolfo García, a neurolinguist at Argentina’s University of San Andrés, had a chance encounter with a photographer who amused his models by chattering to them backward—the Spanish word casa (house) became “asac,” for instance. Upon learning that the photographer had been fluent in “backward speech” since childhood and was capable of holding a conversation… Continue reading People Who Speak Backward Reveal the Brain’s Endless Ability to Play with Language
Quantum Physics Isn’t as Weird as You Think. It’s Weirder
Down at the level of atoms and electrons, quantum physics describes the behavior of the very smallest objects. Solar panels, LED lights, your mobile phone and MRI scanners in hospitals: all of these rely on quantum behavior. It is one of the best-tested theories of physics, and we use it all the time. On the… Continue reading Quantum Physics Isn’t as Weird as You Think. It’s Weirder
Google DeepMind Trains ‘Artificial Brainstorming’ in Chess AI
When Covid-19 sent people home in early 2020, the computer scientist Tom Zahavy rediscovered chess. He had played as a kid and had recently read Garry Kasparov’s Deep Thinking, a memoir of the grandmaster’s 1997 matches against IBM’s chess-playing computer, Deep Blue. He watched chess videos on YouTube and The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix. Despite… Continue reading Google DeepMind Trains ‘Artificial Brainstorming’ in Chess AI
The Astonishing Behavior of Recursive Sequences
In mathematics, simple rules can unlock universes of complexity and beauty. Take the famous Fibonacci sequence, which is defined as follows: It begins with 1 and 1, and each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two. The first few numbers are: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 … Simple, yes,… Continue reading The Astonishing Behavior of Recursive Sequences
AI Designs Little Robots in 30 Seconds, and They Keep Sprouting Legs
Artificial intelligence can design an autonomous robot in 30 seconds flat on a laptop or smartphone. It’s not quite time to panic about just anybody being able to create the Terminator while waiting at the bus stop: as reported in a recent study, the robots are simple machines that scoot along in straight lines without… Continue reading AI Designs Little Robots in 30 Seconds, and They Keep Sprouting Legs
Cryptographers Devise an Approach for Total Search Privacy
So even with his hope renewed, Wichs assumed that any version of these programs that was secure was still a long way off. Instead, he and his co-authors — Wei-Kai Lin, now at the University of Virginia, and Ethan Mook, also at Northeastern — worked on problems they thought would be easier, which involved cases… Continue reading Cryptographers Devise an Approach for Total Search Privacy
In the ‘Wild West’ of Geometry, Mathematicians Redefine the Sphere
If you’ve ever been stuck in traffic on a rainy afternoon, you’ve probably watched raindrops racing each other down the car window. When pairs of droplets collide, they merge into a new droplet, losing their separate identities. That merging is possible because the water droplets are just about spherical. When shapes are flexible — as… Continue reading In the ‘Wild West’ of Geometry, Mathematicians Redefine the Sphere
This Code Breaking Quaker Poet Hunted Nazis
Known as “America’s first female cryptanalyst,” Elizebeth Smith Friedman was a master code breaker who played a pivotal role in both World Wars. For many years, no one knew what she had done, not even her own family. Code breaking wasn’t Smith Friedman’s plan to begin with. In the mid-1910s she was a 23-year-old college… Continue reading This Code Breaking Quaker Poet Hunted Nazis