Tag: Quantum Stuff

Here’s a scary scenario: You’ve been put in charge of air traffic control at Newark airport near New York. You need to make sure every plane can taxi between the runway and its gate without hitting any other planes. Let’s bring the power of mathematics to bear on your problem. First, create a big, abstract… Continue reading The Fastest Way Yet to Color Graphs

You’ve no doubt seen this kind of news headline: “Astronomers Say Space Rock May Hit Earth in the Not-Too-Distant Future!” We usually get such warnings about one or two objects every year; the latest iteration concerns an asteroid, 2024 YR4, that is estimated to be more than 50 meters wide. For a while there was… Continue reading How Can We Know If an Asteroid Will Hit Earth?

When Mario Krenn was studying quantum physics at the University of Vienna, he was trained in a particular way of designing new experiments: “You go to a blackboard, and you think very hard,” he said. In 2014, Krenn was trying to come up with a way to observe a particular quantum state. A typical setup… Continue reading What Happens When AI Starts To Ask the Questions?

February 7, 2025 4 min read The U.S. Is Not Ready for Bird Flu in Humans Bird flu is infecting more people than we think. We need to stop it now before a new pandemic begins By Megha Satyanarayana Aberration Films LTD/Science Photo Library/Getty Images Right after President Donald Trump took office, amid the flurry… Continue reading The U.S. Is Not Ready for Bird Flu in Humans

War in Europe is a staple topic in the study of history, but there’s one major conflict most history books won’t teach you: the battle of the equal sign, =. These two parallel lines were, in fact, the source of serious dispute among European mathematicians in the mid-1500s. This dispute is just one of many… Continue reading Mathematics + Symbols = a Surprising × Contentious History

Large language models (LLMs) are becoming increasingly more impressive at creating human-like text and answering questions, but whether they can understand the meaning of the words they generate is a hotly debated issue. A big challenge is that LLMs are black boxes; they can make predictions and decisions on the order of words, but they… Continue reading Will AI Ever Understand Language Like Humans?

It can be tempting to assume that your intuitions about three-dimensional space carry over to higher-dimensional realms. After all, adding another dimension simply creates a new direction to move around in. It doesn’t change the defining features of space: its endlessness and its uniformity. But different dimensions have decidedly different personalities. In dimensions 8 and… Continue reading Dimension 126 Contains Strangely Twisted Shapes, Mathematicians Prove

Language isn’t always necessary. While it certainly helps in getting across certain ideas, some neuroscientists have argued that many forms of human thought and reasoning don’t require the medium of words and grammar. Sometimes, the argument goes, having to turn ideas into language actually slows down the thought process. Now there’s intriguing evidence that certain… Continue reading To Make Language Models Work Better, Researchers Sidestep Language

Genetic technologies soon gave him a way to do so. During the first decade of his studies of neuronal development, Ginty amassed a library of genes specific to different touch neuron types. Around 2007, he began genetically engineering mice in which these genes could be used to control particular populations of touch neurons. In each… Continue reading Touch, Our Most Complex Sense, Is a Landscape of Cellular Sensors

February 7, 2025 2 min read Why This AI Gazes into Goat Faces AI-based systems can help identify livestock’s early signs of distress By Lucy Tu edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier Nitin Prabhudesai/Getty Images The patient grumbled and grimaced, but he refused to speak to his doctor. The patient was a goat. Recognizing animal pain… Continue reading Why This AI Gazes into Goat Faces