Tag: Quantum Stuff

Here’s a game Claude Shannon, the founder of information theory, invented in 1948. He was trying to model the English language as a random process. Go to your bookshelf, pick up a random book, open it and point to a random spot on the page, and mark the first two letters you see. Say they’re… Continue reading A Random Walk through the English Language

Our mushy brains seem a far cry from the solid silicon chips in computer processors, but scientists have a long history of comparing the two. As Alan Turing put it in 1952: “We are not interested in the fact that the brain has the consistency of cold porridge.” In other words, the medium doesn’t matter,… Continue reading How Computationally Complex Is a Single Neuron?

Venus scientists have long complained that the planet wasn’t getting its due in robotic investigators. But those days are over: space agencies have announced three new missions to Earth’s mysterious twin in just over a week. On June 2, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced that the agency would pursue two new Venus missions dubbed DAVINCI+ and VERITAS, aiming… Continue reading Venus Wins Stunning Third New Mission, This Time from Europe

So far no one has come up with any clear account of how a coronavirus escaped biosafety level 4 barriers. Photograph by MihasLi / Shutterstock Disasters evoke a search for who to blame. Mishandled disasters make that search vital for anyone whose actions or inactions may have amplified the catastrophe’s damage. As the official United… Continue reading The “Lab Leak”: It’s Not Enough to Say Accidents Happen – Facts So Romantic

For a long time, mathematicians thought that sharp folds were the only way to have both characteristics at once: a crumpled shape with lengths preserved. “If you allow corners to happen, then the problem is much easier,” said Tristan Buckmaster of Princeton University. But in 1954, John Nash identified a remarkably different type of isometric… Continue reading Mathematicians Identify Threshold at Which Shapes Give Way

We like to think of ourselves as unique. That conceit may even be true when it comes to our cosmic neighborhood: Despite the fact that planets between the sizes of Earth and Neptune appear to be the most common in the cosmos, no such intermediate-mass planets can be found in the solar system. The problem… Continue reading Astronomers Find Secret Planet-Making Ingredient: Magnetic Fields

Freedom of Information request by open science advocates has revealed academic journal pricing through an administrative court decision. Finland is the first country where the subscription prices paid by practically all universities and research institutions to individual publishers are made available. This strengthens the position of universities in the 2016 contract negotiations, made ever more… Continue reading Finland takes leading role in the openness of academic journal pricing — Mostly Physics