Category: Quantum Stuff

The Earth’s atmosphere is nothing but freely roaming molecules. Left alone, they would drift and collide, and eventually even out into a mixture that’s dynamic, yet stable and broadly unchanging. The sun’s rays complicate things. Energy enters the Earth system in daily cycles, the bulk of it going to whichever half of the planet is… Continue reading The Climate Change Paradox | Quanta Magazine

Nearly 170 years ago, a scientist named Eunice Foote discovered a fundamental truth about the gases that surround us. In her home laboratory in New York, she filled one glass cylinder with carbon dioxide and another with regular air, placed a thermometer in each and left them out in the sun. Less than 20 minutes… Continue reading Photos Capture the Extreme, Beautiful Work of Climate Science

Intermediate Interest The eukaryotic cell, in some ways, looks as though it came out of nowhere. Unlike bacteria and archaea, which are much older forms of life called prokaryotes, a eukaryotic cell has a double membrane of lipids around it. It also has mitochondria — remnants of formerly free-living bacteria — providing energy, a nucleus… Continue reading Tiny Tubes Reveal Clues to the Evolution of Complex Life

This Nature Outlook is editorially independent, produced with financial support from Avadel. I never had issues with sleep until the COVID-19 pandemic. A couple of months into lockdown in 2020, I found myself unable to fall or stay asleep. My worries played on an unstoppable loop, and the longer I lay in bed, the more… Continue reading One Woman’s Pharmaceutical Journey to a Good Night’s Sleep

Single Atom Acts as a Quantum Computer and Simulates Molecules A quantum computer has used a single atom to model the complex dynamics of organic molecules interacting with light By Davide Castelvecchi & Nature magazine A view inside the trapped-ion quantum computer that carried out a first-of-its-kind simulation of molecular chemistry. The University of Sydney/Sciencebrush.design… Continue reading A Single Atom Has Achieved a Breakthrough in Quantum Simulation

Alexander Mordvintsev showed me two clumps of pixels on his screen. They pulsed, grew and blossomed into monarch butterflies. As the two butterflies grew, they smashed into each other, and one got the worst of it; its wing withered away. But just as it seemed like a goner, the mutilated butterfly did a kind of… Continue reading Self-Assembly Gets Automated in Reverse of ‘Game of Life’

Vitamin D May Slow Cells’ Aging Vitamin D supplements may help prevent the loss of telomeres, DNA sequences that shrink with aging, a large study shows. But the health effects aren’t yet clear By Stephanie Pappas edited by Jeanna Bryner A new study suggests vitamin D supplements might slow cellular aging by protecting telomeres. Olga… Continue reading Vitamin D May Slow Cells’ Aging by Protecting DNA

The latest ambition of artificial intelligence research — particularly within the labs seeking “artificial general intelligence,” or AGI — is something called a world model: a representation of the environment that an AI carries around inside itself like a computational snow globe. The AI system can use this simplified representation to evaluate predictions and decisions… Continue reading ‘World Models,’ an Old Idea in AI, Mount a Comeback

A mere decade ago astronomers knew of just 62 moons around Saturn. Today the ringed planet boasts a staggering 274 official satellites. That’s more than any other world in the solar system—and far too many for most people to keep track of. Astronomer Edward Ashton is no exception, even though he has helped discover 192… Continue reading How One Astronomer Uncovered Nearly 200 Moons—Around Just One Planet