The gallium anomaly, however, would point toward a lighter-weight sterile neutrino, with the electron neutrinos emitted by the radioactive source sometimes oscillating into a sterile neutrino that wouldn’t interact with the gallium. In some models, lightweight sterile neutrinos could comprise a fraction of the universe’s dark matter, though not all of it because they would… Continue reading What Could Explain the Gallium Anomaly?
Category: Quantum Stuff
What Is Machine Learning? | Quanta Magazine
By now, many people think they know what machine learning is: You “feed” computers a bunch of “training data” so that they “learn” to do things without our having to specify exactly how. But computers aren’t dogs, data isn’t kibble, and that previous sentence has way too many air quotes. What does that stuff really… Continue reading What Is Machine Learning? | Quanta Magazine
How America’s Fastest Swimmers Use Math to Win Gold
Except in my case, it really is a digital twin. It looks like an EKG, going tch, tch, tch, and it’s developed based on the data I’ve captured about an athlete’s movements. I can model how they will race under different conditions. Over the last seven or eight years, I’ve collected thousands of swims from… Continue reading How America’s Fastest Swimmers Use Math to Win Gold
A Double Emergence of Periodical Cicadas Isn’t Cicada-geddon—It’s a Marvel
Late spring and early summer in the forests of the eastern half of the U.S. have been eerily quiet for the past two years. In most years, long-lived periodical cicadas thrum through the region, but a quirk of timing means these insects have been sparse since 2021. This year, though, they’re roaring back. That’s because… Continue reading A Double Emergence of Periodical Cicadas Isn’t Cicada-geddon—It’s a Marvel
Sunlight-Dimming Climate Schemes Need Worldwide Oversight
Sunlight-Dimming Climate Schemes Need Worldwide Oversight As the climate crisis intensifies, experiments to “cool the planet” by reflecting solar radiation proliferate. Without proper global and national regulation, they will worsen the crisis By Chandra Bhushan & Tarun Gopalakrishnan NASA/SDO/AIA/Goddard Space Flight Center Deliberately reflecting sunlight into space to cool the planet—solar radiation modification (SRM)—is now… Continue reading Sunlight-Dimming Climate Schemes Need Worldwide Oversight
Tracing the Hidden Hand of Magnetism in the Galaxy
When were you first drawn to learning about it? I don’t think that was from some deep-seated, lifelong need to study magnetism, but it grabbed me in grad school as an area of astrophysics that is not well understood and is avoided for its complexity. For astrophysics in general, I did a National Science Foundation… Continue reading Tracing the Hidden Hand of Magnetism in the Galaxy
Amateur Mathematicians Find Fifth ‘Busy Beaver’ Turing Machine
One memorable encounter occurred while Ligocki was visiting Germany the summer after his sophomore year, when he took a side trip to Berlin to meet up with Marxen. “We got through the language barrier through the medium of busy beavers,” he said. The medium of beer also helped. Ligocki ended up having too many and… Continue reading Amateur Mathematicians Find Fifth ‘Busy Beaver’ Turing Machine
What Can Tiling Patterns Teach Us?
In the tiling of wallpaper and bathroom floors, collective repeated patterns often emerge. Mathematicians have long tried to find a tiling shape that never repeats in this way. In 2023, they lauded an unexpected amateur victor. That discovery of the elusive aperiodic monotile propelled the field into new dimensions. The study of tessellation is much… Continue reading What Can Tiling Patterns Teach Us?
How AI Revolutionized Protein Science, but Didn’t End It
To some biologists, that approach leaves the protein folding problem incomplete. From the earliest days of structural biology, researchers hoped to learn the rules of how an amino acid string folds into a protein. With AlphaFold2, most biologists agree that the structure prediction problem is solved. However, the protein folding problem is not. “Right now,… Continue reading How AI Revolutionized Protein Science, but Didn’t End It
Is ‘Bed Rotting’ Good or Bad for Your Sleep?
Is ‘Bed Rotting’ Good or Bad for Your Sleep? “Bed rotting,” or staying in bed all day, has been touted as a self-care routine on TikTok, but it might actually make you feel worse. Here’s why that happens and how you can snap out of it By Elana Spivack Mariia Borovkova/Getty Images The grueling stretch… Continue reading Is ‘Bed Rotting’ Good or Bad for Your Sleep?