Tech
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Quanta Magazine
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10
hours ago
What Is the True Promise of Quantum Computing?
Quantum computing promises unprecedented speed, but in practice, it’s proven remarkably difficult to find important questions that quantum machines can solve faster than classical ones. One of the most notable demonstrations of this came from Ewin Tang, who rose to prominence in the field as a teenager. When quantum algorithms had in principle cracked the so-called recommendation problem… Source
Tech
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Quanta Magazine
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1
day ago
Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex
In 1950 the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi was discussing the possibility of intelligent alien life with his colleagues. If alien civilizations exist, he said, some should surely have had enough time to expand throughout the cosmos. So where are they? Many answers to Fermi’s “paradox” have been proposed: Maybe alien civilizations burn out or destroy themselves before they can become interstellar… Source
Tech
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Quanta Magazine
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3
days ago
A New Proof Smooths Out the Math of Melting
Imagine an ice cube floating in a glass of water. Eventually, it will melt down to a tiny frozen speck before disappearing. As it shrinks, its surface gets smoother, and any irregularities or sharp edges gradually vanish. Mathematicians want to understand this process in greater detail, to be able to say exactly how the surface of the ice — or, say, the shape of a gradually eroding sandcastle… Source
Tech
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Quanta Magazine
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6
days ago
The High Cost of Quantum Randomness Is Dropping
Nothing is certain in the quantum realm. A particle, for example, can exist in multiple quantum states simultaneously. The same goes for a quantum bit, or qubit — the basic unit of information used in quantum computing. The act of measurement causes these objects to collapse into a single state, and usually the best you can do is calculate the probability of a particular outcome. Source
Tech
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Quanta Magazine
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8
days ago
The Mysterious Flow of Fluid in the Brain
Encased in the skull, perched atop the spine, the brain has a carefully managed existence. It receives only certain nutrients, filtered through the blood-brain barrier; an elaborate system of protective membranes surrounds it. That privileged space contains a mystery. For more than a century, scientists have wondered: If it’s so hard for anything to get into the brain, how does waste get out? Source
Tech
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Quanta Magazine
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10
days ago
Three Hundred Years Later, a Tool from Isaac Newton Gets an Update
Every day, researchers search for optimal solutions. They might want to figure out where to build a major airline hub. Or to determine how to maximize return while minimizing risk in an investment portfolio. Or to develop self-driving cars that can distinguish between traffic lights and stop signs. Mathematically, these problems get translated into a search for the minimum values of functions. Source
Tech
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Quanta Magazine
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13
days ago
How Metabolism Can Shape Cells’ Destinies
Each of us starts life as a single cell. To develop into a complex, multicellular being, that cell must divide, and then those cells must divide again, and again — and then these stem cells start to specialize into different types, with different destinies in our bodies. In the first week, our cells reach their first turning point: They must become either placenta or embryo. Then… Source
Tech
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Quanta Magazine
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14
days ago
How Did Multicellular Life Evolve?
At first, life on Earth was simple. Cells existed, functioned and reproduced as free-living individuals. But then, something remarkable happened. Some cells joined forces, working together instead of being alone. This transition, known as multicellularity, was a pivotal event in the history of life on Earth. Multicellularity enabled greater biological complexity, which sparked an extraordinary… Source
Tech
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Quanta Magazine
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15
days ago
Is Dark Energy Getting Weaker? New Evidence Strengthens the Case.
Last spring, a team of nearly 1,000 cosmologists announced that dark energy — the enigmatic agent propelling the universe to swell in size at an ever-increasing rate — might be slackening. The bombshell result, based on the team’s observations of the motions of millions of galaxies combined with other data, was tentative and preliminary. Today, the scientists report that they have analyzed more… Source
Tech
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Quanta Magazine
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17
days ago
Quantum Speedup Found for Huge Class of Hard Problems
For computer scientists, solving problems is a bit like mountaineering. First they must choose a problem to solve — akin to identifying a peak to climb — and then they must develop a strategy to solve it. Classical and quantum researchers compete using different strategies, with a healthy rivalry between the two. Quantum researchers report a fast way to solve a problem — often by scaling a peak… Source
Tech
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Quanta Magazine
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20
days ago
‘Once in a Century’ Proof Settles Math’s Kakeya Conjecture
Consider a pencil lying on your desk. Try to spin it around so that it points once in every direction, but make sure it sweeps over as little of the desk’s surface as possible. You might twirl the pencil about its middle, tracing out a circle. But if you slide it in clever ways, you can do much better. “It’s just a problem about how straight lines can intersect one another… Source
Tech
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Quanta Magazine
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21
days ago
New Conversations, Deep Questions, Bold Ideas in Season Four of ‘The Joy of Why’
How did complex life evolve? Where did space-time come from? Will computers ever understand language like we do? How did geometry create modern physics? These are just a few of the big and bold questions that we’ll be exploring in the latest season of Quanta’s interview podcast, “The Joy of Why,” starting March 20, and released every other Thursday. As ever, we will be talking to researchers and… Source
Tech
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Quanta Magazine
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22
days ago
The Road Map to Alien Life Passes Through the ‘Cosmic Shoreline’
In the late 1970s, Saturn’s odd moon Titan, a hazy orange world, was expecting visitors — first, NASA’s Pioneer 11 probe, then the twin Voyager spacecraft. Most moons are airless or boast little more than gauzy, gaseous veils. But Titan is cloaked in a blanket of nitrogen and methane so thick that, with a pair of wings and a running start, astronauts on the frosty satellite could fly just by… Source
Tech
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Quanta Magazine
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24
days ago
Why Do Researchers Care About Small Language Models?
Large language models work well because they’re so large. The latest models from OpenAI, Meta and DeepSeek use hundreds of billions of “parameters” — the adjustable knobs that determine connections among data and get tweaked during the training process. With more parameters, the models are better able to identify patterns and connections, which in turn makes them more powerful and accurate. Source
Tech
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Quanta Magazine
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27
days ago
‘Next-Level’ Chaos Traces the True Limit of Predictability
The French scholar Pierre-Simon Laplace crisply articulated his expectation that the universe was fully knowable in 1814, asserting that a sufficiently clever “demon” could predict the entire future given a complete knowledge of the present. His thought experiment marked the height of optimism about what physicists might forecast. Since then, reality has repeatedly humbled their ambitions to… Source
Tech
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Quanta Magazine
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29
days ago
A New, Chemical View of Ecosystems
The biological world is awash in chemical signals. Ants lead their nest mates to food with winding trails of pheromones, plants exude aerosols to warn their neighbors of herbivores, and everything you experience as “smell” is a molecule latching onto your nose. Some molecular messages find their targets; most linger unread in the environment. But sometimes, other species — chemical eavesdroppers… Source
