Perpetual motion machines are impossible, at least in our everyday world. But down at the level of quantum mechanics, the laws of thermodynamics don’t always apply in quite the same way. In 2021, after years […]
Perpetual motion machines are impossible, at least in our everyday world. But down at the level of quantum mechanics, the laws of thermodynamics don’t always apply in quite the same way. In 2021, after years […]
Computation is a familiar concept most of us understand intuitively. Take the function f(x) = x + 3. When x is three, f(3) = 3 + 3. Six. Easy. It seems obvious that this function […]
On March 15, intriguing seminar announcements sent rumblings through the field of combinatorics, the mathematical study of counting. Three collaborators planned to give coordinated talks the following day. Julian Sahasrabudhe would address mathematicians in Cambridge, […]
For the first time, researchers have determined how a human olfactory receptor captures an airborne scent molecule, the pivotal chemical event that triggers our sense of smell. Whether it evokes roses or vanilla, cigarettes or […]
Machine learning models are incredibly powerful tools. They extract deeply hidden patterns in large data sets that our limited human brains can’t parse. These complex algorithms, then, need to be incomprehensible “black boxes,” because a […]
The first proof that many people ever learn, early in high school, is the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid’s proof that there are infinitely many prime numbers. It takes just a few lines and uses no […]
In March 2018 at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, surrounded by his devoted keepers, Sudan the northern white rhino breathed his last. He wasn’t the only remaining northern white rhino because three females in […]
Torrents of charged particles continuously lift off the sun’s atmosphere and radiate outward at millions of kilometers per hour, yielding a solar wind so immense that its limit defines the outer edge of our solar […]
As an undergraduate at the University of Chile, Bernardo Subercaseaux took a dim view of using computers to do math. It seemed antithetical to real intellectual discovery. “There’s some instinct or gut reaction against using […]
Dazzling intricacies of brain structure are revealed every day, but one of the most obvious aspects of brain wiring eludes neuroscientists. The nervous system is cross-wired, so that the left side of the brain controls […]
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