Quanta Magazine

05/10/2022

‘Machine Scientists’ Distill the Laws of Physics From Raw Data

The latest "machine scientist" algorithms can take in data on dark matter, dividing cells, turbulence, and other situations too complicated for humans to understand and provide an equation capturing the essence of what’s going on.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/machine-scientists-distill-the-laws-of-physics-from-raw-data-20220510

Researchers say we’re on the cusp of “GoPro physics,” where a camera can point at an event and an algorithm can identify the underlying physics equation.

05/10/2022

This equation is often described as the most beautiful in all of mathematics. Each of its numbers, 0, 1, π, 𝑖 and 𝑒 symbolize an entire branch of math, and in that way the equation can be seen as a glorious confluence, a testament to the unity of math. https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-infinite-series-reveal-the-unity-of-mathematics-20220124/

05/09/2022

Fermion or Boson?

Every particle in the Standard Model is either a fermion or a boson. Quantum rules govern how these particles occupy space. Fermions, which cannot occupy the same space, are matter particles, while bosons, which can overlap, are force particles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unl1jXFnzgo

05/09/2022

Elastocaloric materials like nickel-manganese-titanium experience drastic changes in temperature when pushed upon by an outside force. Read how changes in entropy make these materials behave so curiously: https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-caloric-materials-cool-and-protect-the-environment-20200824/

05/09/2022

Thank you, @PulitzerPrizes committee. We feel deeply honored and thrilled, particularly for this recognition of our wonderfully talented and hard-working colleague Natalie Wolchover, who has been a big part of Quanta since the beginning.

Read about Quanta Magazine and Natalie Wolchover’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the James Webb Space Telescope at the link in our bio. Once you’re there, you’ll also find a link to the original story, “The Webb Space Telescope Will Rewrite Cosmic History. If It Works.”

05/09/2022

Researchers Glimpse How AI Gets So Good at Language Processing | Quanta Magazine

Meta is inviting researchers to study its massive language model. The company hopes that this transparency will help prevent the AI from spewing misinformation and toxic language, reports Will Douglas Heaven for MIT Technology Review.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/05/03/1051691/meta-ai-large-language-model-gpt3-ethics-huggingface-transparency/

Part of the difficulty in controlling these language models stems from our poor understanding of how they process language. In April Mordechai Rorvig reported for Quanta on new insights into their inner workings using a simplified AI.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/researchers-glimpse-how-ai-gets-so-good-at-language-processing-20220414/

Language processing programs are notoriously hard to interpret, but smaller versions can provide important insights into how they work.

05/09/2022

Thank you, Pulitzer Prizes committee. We feel deeply honored and thrilled, particularly for this recognition of our wonderfully talented and hard-working colleague Natalie Wolchover, who has been a big part of Quanta since the beginning. https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/2022

Here is the feature by Natalie that the Pulitzer Prizes have honored. https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-nasas-james-webb-space-telescope-matters-so-much-20211203/

05/09/2022

Why ‘De-Extinction’ Is Impossible (But Could Work Anyway) | Quanta Magazine

Bringing back perfect recreations of extinct species isn’t possible. But genetic and advanced breeding technologies could produce “de-extinct” proxies of extinct species — and that may be enough for conservation and research.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-de-extinction-is-impossible-but-could-work-anyway-20220509

Several projects are aiming to bring back mammoths and other species that have vanished from the planet. Whether that’s technically possible is beside the point.

05/09/2022

Listen and subscribe to the new podcast here: https://listen.quantamagazine.org/joy-104-s

Transcript: https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-do-space-time-and-gravity-come-from-20220504/

05/09/2022

Five mathematicians at the University of Birmingham have proved a nearly 50-year-old graph theory conjecture using a new technique in combinatorics called absorption. https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-settle-erdos-coloring-conjecture-20210405/

05/09/2022

Craters on the moon have been taken as evidence for the Late Heavy Bombardment, but reassessments of Apollo moon rocks have cast doubt on whether the asteroid bombardments during the Hadean era were as severe as was thought. (From 2018) https://www.quantamagazine.org/fossil-discoveries-challenge-ideas-about-earths-start-20180122/

05/08/2022

Scientists have built deep neural networks that can map between infinite dimensional spaces. https://www.quantamagazine.org/latest-neural-nets-solve-worlds-hardest-equations-faster-than-ever-before-20210419

05/08/2022

Where Quantum Probability Comes From | Quanta Magazine

The probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics is what famously inspired Einstein’s quip about God not playing dice. But quantum mechanics can illuminate what we mean by probability in the first place. (From 2019) https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-quantum-probability-comes-from-20190909/

There are many different ways to think about probability. Quantum mechanics embodies them all.

05/08/2022

In Test Tubes, RNA Molecules Evolve Into a Tiny Ecosystem | Quanta Magazine

In test tubes containing a single type of RNA “species” and cellular machinery for translating genes, scientists grew a more complex, cooperative community of molecules replete with parasites and hosts. https://www.quantamagazine.org/in-test-tubes-rna-molecules-evolve-into-a-tiny-ecosystem-20220505/

When researchers gave a genetic molecule the ability to replicate, it evolved over time into a complex network of “hosts” and “parasites” that both competed and cooperated to survive.

05/08/2022

How Maxwell’s Demon Continues to Startle Scientists

In 1948, Claude Shannon showed that the information content of a message could be quantified with what he called the information entropy. This work proved fundamental to solving a thought experiment that stumped physicists for over a century. https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-maxwells-demon-continues-to-startle-scientists-20210422/

The thorny thought experiment has been turned into a real experiment — one that physicists use to probe the physics of information.

05/08/2022

How Do Math Magicians Know Your Number? | Quanta Magazine

How do magicians guess the number in your head, or the card in your hand? If you pay attention, what seems like magic may be math. These puzzles are designed to astonish and amaze, and even inspire a fascination with numbers. https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-do-math-magicians-know-your-number-20220504

Mathematical magic can seem like mind reading. Your job is to reveal the secret behind these four tricks.

05/08/2022

This week at Quanta: One of the most famous open questions in math may be a stone’s throw closer to being answered. • It may sound counterintuitive, but the inherent uncertainty of the quantum world can actually help scientists make more precise measurements. • This month’s Insights puzzle explores math that feels like magic. • In a stirring new study, researchers saw a complex molecular ecosystem evolve from a single type of RNA molecule.

05/08/2022

Cryptography Pioneer Seeks Secure Elections the Low-Tech Way

“People can run a democracy however they want as long as they’re getting the right answers. As a technologist, I’m exploring mathematical alternatives.” (From 2020) https://www.quantamagazine.org/rsa-cryptographer-ronald-rivest-seeks-secure-elections-20200312/

Ronald Rivest helped come up with the RSA algorithm, which safeguards online commerce. Now he’s hoping to make democratic elections more trustworthy.

05/08/2022

A Billion Years Before Sex, Ancient Cells Were Equipped for It | Quanta Magazine

Eukaryotes from kelp to koalas all use sex to reproduce. Researchers have discovered that the molecular tools for sex may have evolved before eukaryotes did. https://www.quantamagazine.org/ancient-cells-had-sex-fusion-proteins-long-before-sex-evolved-20220216/

Molecular detective work is zeroing in on the origins of sexual reproduction. The protein tools for cell mergers seem to have long predated sex — so what were they doing?

05/07/2022

Icy Antimatter Experiment Surprises Physicists | Quanta Magazine

Recent work has opened up a new realm of possibilities for laser spectroscopy, a method that physicists use to study matter and antimatter atoms. https://www.quantamagazine.org/icy-antimatter-experiment-surprises-physicists-20220316/

An experiment conducted on hybrid matter-antimatter atoms has defied researchers’ expectations.

05/07/2022

Around 450 BCE, while imprisoned for claiming the sun was not a god, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae pondered a question that has challenged mathematicians ever since: Using a compass and a straightedge, can you produce a square of equal area to a given circle? https://www.quantamagazine.org/an-ancient-geometry-problem-falls-to-new-mathematical-techniques-20220208/

05/07/2022

Physicists Show How Quantum Uncertainty Sharpens Measurements | Quanta Magazine

It may sound counterintuitive, but the inherent uncertainty of the quantum world can actually help scientists make more precise measurements. https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-show-how-quantum-uncertainty-sharpens-measurements-20220503

Throwing out data seems to make measurements of distances and angles more precise. The reason why has been traced to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.

05/07/2022

All organisms on Earth adhere to the same basic genetic rules. Scientists have shown that it is biophysically possible to create a lifeform with more expansive genetic options. https://www.quantamagazine.org/life-with-longer-genetic-codes-seems-possible-but-less-likely-20220411/

05/07/2022

Mathematicians Coax Fluid Equations Into Nonphysical Solutions | Quanta Magazine

Blowing up the famed Navier-Stokes equations, or proving that a blow-up will never happen, is a $1 million problem. Mathematicians recently got closer. https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-coax-fluid-equations-into-nonphysical-solutions-20220502/

The famed Navier-Stokes equations can lead to cases where more than one result is possible, but only in an extremely narrow set of situations.

05/07/2022

Behemoth black holes anchor most galaxies like our own Milky Way. Where did they come from? https://www.quantamagazine.org/tiny-galaxies-reveal-secrets-of-supermassive-black-holes-20220314/

05/06/2022

How Big Data Carried Graph Theory Into New Dimensions | Quanta Magazine

Mathematicians, computer scientists and other researchers are increasingly focusing on ways to generalize graph theory — in its many guises — to explore the higher-order phenomena exhibited in the modern abundance of data. https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-big-data-carried-graph-theory-into-new-dimensions-20210819/

Researchers are turning to the mathematics of higher-order interactions to better model the complex connections within their data.

05/06/2022

Sometimes even the tiniest mutations can reshape the evolution of a species. https://www.quantamagazine.org/flying-fish-and-aquarium-pets-yield-secrets-of-evolution-20220105

05/06/2022

Four Years On, New Experiment Sees No Sign of ‘Cosmic Dawn’ | Quanta Magazine

The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) just completed the deepest-ever radio-wave mapping of the cosmic web, reports Ben Brubaker for Scientific American. The experiment maps radiation from a particular hydrogen transition known as the 21- centimeter line.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/canadian-telescope-delivers-deepest-ever-radio-view-of-cosmic-web/

This 21-cm transition has been used in the past to identify the era when the first stars were created, dubbed the cosmic dawn. But in February Ben Brubaker reported for Quanta on a recent experiment that found no sign of this cosmic dawn.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/in-new-experiment-astronomers-see-no-sign-of-cosmic-dawn-20220228/

When astronomers tried to confirm a signal from the birth of the first stars after the Big Bang, they saw nothing.