Last year, the particle physicist Lance Dixon was preparing a lecture when he noticed a striking similarity between two formulas that he planned to include in his slides. The formulas, called scattering amplitudes, give the probabilities of possible outcomes of particle collisions. One of the scattering amplitudes represented the probability of two gluon particles colliding… Continue reading Particle Physicists Puzzle Over a New Duality
Category: Quantum Stuff
The Computer Scientist Trying to Teach AI to Learn Like We Do
Quanta Magazine > 0; if (typeof predicate !== ‘function’) { throw new TypeError(‘predicate must be a function’); } var thisArg = arguments[1]; var k = 0; while (k We care about your data, and we’d like to use cookies to give you a smooth browsing experience. Please agree and read more about our privacy policy.Agree… Continue reading The Computer Scientist Trying to Teach AI to Learn Like We Do
What to Tell Kids about Ukraine: Recommendations from a Psychologist
The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has escalated: Russian troops have invaded and now control several areas in Ukraine. Heavy fighting is raging in some cities, and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has declared martial law. This causes fear and worry to many people in Europe, including children and other young people. But how do you… Continue reading What to Tell Kids about Ukraine: Recommendations from a Psychologist
The Manhattan Project Shows Scientists’ Moral and Ethical Responsibilities
After the first-ever explosion of an atomic bomb on July 16, 1945 near Socorro, N.M., J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, recited a line from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Less than a month later, a quarter of a million lives were lost to the… Continue reading The Manhattan Project Shows Scientists’ Moral and Ethical Responsibilities
Geometric Analysis Reveals How Birds Mastered Flight
Quanta Magazine > 0; if (typeof predicate !== ‘function’) { throw new TypeError(‘predicate must be a function’); } var thisArg = arguments[1]; var k = 0; while (k We care about your data, and we’d like to use cookies to give you a smooth browsing experience. Please agree and read more about our privacy policy.Agree… Continue reading Geometric Analysis Reveals How Birds Mastered Flight
Black Holes Finally Proven Mathematically Stable
In 1963, the mathematician Roy Kerr found a solution to Einstein’s equations that precisely described the space-time outside what we now call a rotating black hole. (The term wouldn’t be coined for a few more years.) In the nearly six decades since his achievement, researchers have tried to show that these so-called Kerr black holes… Continue reading Black Holes Finally Proven Mathematically Stable
This Planetary Scientist Is Always Reaching for Something Big
Lindy Elkins-Tanton, a planetary scientist who studies the evolution of the terrestrial planets and life on Earth, fell in love with science as a girl because considering the vast scales of time and space inherent in studying geology gave her some solace from her personal troubles—it made them seem small and surmountable. A sense of… Continue reading This Planetary Scientist Is Always Reaching for Something Big
How the ‘Diamond of the Plant World’ Helped Land Plants Evolve
Recently, Li and his colleagues used their method to characterize sporopollenin from more than 100 diverse land plant species collected from botanic gardens around the northeastern United States. According to Li, who is preparing to submit the results of the study for publication, the structure of sporopollenin varies across plant types in a curious pattern.… Continue reading How the ‘Diamond of the Plant World’ Helped Land Plants Evolve
Messenger RNA Therapies Are Finally Fulfilling Their Promise
In just 17 years messenger RNA therapies have gone from proof of concept to global salvation. The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines for COVID-19 have been given to hundreds of millions of people, saving countless lives. In 2005 Katalin Karikó and I created a way to make mRNA molecules that would not cause dangerous inflammation when… Continue reading Messenger RNA Therapies Are Finally Fulfilling Their Promise
The Astrophysicist Who Sculpts Stars Before They Are Born
The prints are also helping us to distinguish different types of substructures. For instance, if you’re looking at a filament in two spatial dimensions, it might actually be a two-dimensional sheet that you’re just looking at on its side. And that’s hard to make out in a flat picture — or even a computer simulation.… Continue reading The Astrophysicist Who Sculpts Stars Before They Are Born