Picture this, because it really happened: Dwayne Johnson stands in an IMAX theater, taking Christopher Nolan’s seat. “I even asked to let me sit where Chris sits,” he said in a recent interview with Imax. “They said, ‘Chris sits here.’” He watches Oppenheimer, then does something peculiar. He texts his movie director a picture of… Continue reading The People’s Champ Has Lost His People
What Is Distributed Computing? | Quanta Magazine
No device is an island: Your daily computational needs depend on more than just the microprocessors inside your computer or phone. Our modern world relies on “distributed computing,” which shares the computational load among multiple different machines. The technique passes data back and forth in an elaborate choreography of digital bits — a dance that… Continue reading What Is Distributed Computing? | Quanta Magazine
Illegal Migrants Less Likely to Commit Crime? Guess Again.
In June, Victor Martinez-Hernandez was charged with the murder of Rachel Morin, a mother of five in Maryland. Police in Oklahoma tracked the accused repeat offender down with a sample of his DNA recovered from a Los Angeles home invasion in which a nine-year-old girl and her mother were assaulted. Police say he came to… Continue reading Illegal Migrants Less Likely to Commit Crime? Guess Again.
New Elliptic Curve Breaks 18-Year-Old Record
In August, a pair of mathematicians discovered an exotic, record-breaking curve. In doing so, they tapped into a major open question about one of the oldest and most fundamental kinds of equations in mathematics. Elliptic curves, which date back to at least ancient Greece, are central to many areas of study. They have a rich… Continue reading New Elliptic Curve Breaks 18-Year-Old Record
The Cosmos Teems with Complex Organic Molecules
But the chemical assembly process probably doesn’t end in the cloud. According to Booth, “we’ve got some really interesting results that might tell us that we’re enhancing [chemical] complexity during planet formation.” As material moves around in the disk, it experiences dramatically varying conditions. The disk’s surface is exposed to heat and radiation, while its… Continue reading The Cosmos Teems with Complex Organic Molecules
What’s the Roundest Object in the Universe?
Every now and again I’ll get a weird thought in my head that sits there demanding an answer. Sometimes it’s trivial, and sometimes it sounds silly but then leads into some fun insights. This time, my brain decided to fixate on a simple question: What’s the roundest object in the universe? By that I mean,… Continue reading What’s the Roundest Object in the Universe?
Investigating Medjugorje
Investigating Medjugorje < !- end of Google Analytics Code Snippet by GA4WP–> ]]> Podcast: Download MYS339: The Vatican has said that nothing obstructs the faithful from having a devotion to Medjugorje, but hasn’t specified whether the phenomenon is of supernatural or natural origin. Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli examine the arguments for and against and… Continue reading Investigating Medjugorje
How Public Key Cryptography Really Works
For thousands of years, if you wanted to send a secret message, there was basically one way to do it. You’d scramble the message using a special rule, known only to you and your intended audience. This rule acted like the key to a lock. If you had the key, you could unscramble the message;… Continue reading How Public Key Cryptography Really Works
Make Education Great Again! | RealClearEducation
Imagine these words as the first speech delivered by the incoming Secretary of Education. Today, I am here to deliver bitter medicine: American education has failed. Teachers and parents, administrators and government—and even students—all bear some responsibility. The most common explanations for our educational crisis are inadequate funding, overuse of standardized testing, and systemic prejudice.… Continue reading Make Education Great Again! | RealClearEducation
Ending NASA’s Chandra Will Cut Us Out of the High-Resolution X-Ray Universe
November 15, 2024 4 min read Ending NASA’s Chandra Will Cut Us Out of the High-Resolution X-Ray Universe The Chandra X-ray Observatory is facing closure. Shutting it down would be a loss to science as a whole By María Arias NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory as it may appear at about 50,000 miles from Earth, nearly… Continue reading Ending NASA’s Chandra Will Cut Us Out of the High-Resolution X-Ray Universe