Tech
-
Quanta Magazine
-
20
hours ago
Why Do We Tell Ourselves Scary Stories About AI?
In fall 2024, the best-selling author and historian Yuval Noah Harari went on the talk show Morning Joe. “Let me tell you one small story,” he said. “When OpenAI developed GPT-4, they wanted to test what this thing can do. So they gave it a test to solve captcha puzzles.” Those are the visual puzzles warped numbers and letters that prove to a website that you’re not a robot. GPT-4 couldn’t… Source
Tech
-
Quanta Magazine
-
2
days ago
Experiments Ring the ‘Death Knell’ for Sterile Neutrinos
Neutrinos have about as little influence as a particle can have. They have essentially no heft, no electric charge, and no “color” charge. As a result, the neutrino has no connection with most of nature’s forces; it can slip through whole planets and stars without striking a single atom. But neutrinos have proven more than capable of bending the life path of a scientist. In the late 1990s… Source
Tech
-
Quanta Magazine
-
4
days ago
An Arctic Road Trip Brings Vital Underground Networks into View
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center. One Tuesday in June 2025, a white Chevy Suburban set off down the northernmost highway in North America. The sun of Alaska’s polar summer hadn’t set in 40 days, and it wouldn’t set again for another 35. But for Michael Van Nuland, the biologist in the driver’s seat, time was already running out. The SUV, packed with four days of fieldwork… Source
Tech
-
Quanta Magazine
-
7
days ago
New Advances Bring the Era of Quantum Computers Closer Than Ever
Some 30 years ago, the mathematician Peter Shor took a niche physics project the dream of building a computer based on the counterintuitive rules of quantum mechanics and shook the world. Shor worked out a way for quantum computers to swiftly solve a couple of math problems that classical computers could complete only after many billions of years. Those two math problems happened to be the… Source
Tech
-
Quanta Magazine
-
9
days ago
A Through-The-Lens Look at the World’s Particle Physics Labs
Last summer, a wedding photographer walked begrudgingly into a physics laboratory outside Rome. Feeling uninspired by the intricate machinery around him, he decided to turn off the lights. “I wanted to create a world that was a bit more intimate,” said the photographer, Marco Donghia. He had been brought into the lab to participate in a photography contest by his sister Raffaella Donghia… Source
Tech
-
Quanta Magazine
-
11
days ago
In Expanding de Sitter Space, Quantum Mechanics Gets Even More Elusive
In theory, a universe can come in any shape or size, but scientists prefer to think about three basic kinds of universes: one that’s expanding, one that’s collapsing, and one that stays the same. Out of these three simplified models, an expanding universe is the hardest for physicists to understand. Yet it’s exactly the one our real world most resembles. When physicists calculate what’s going on… Source
Tech
-
Quanta Magazine
-
14
days ago
When Coupled Volcanoes Talk, These Researchers Listen
In the summer of 1912, word reached Robert Fiske Griggs that the apocalypse had arrived on Kodiak, an inhabited island off the coast of Alaska. The following year, Griggs, a botanist at the University of Ohio, led the first of several expeditions to the island, where he and a team glimpsed a disquieting sight: Kodiak was shrouded in a full foot of ash. And it wasn’t just the island. Source
Tech
-
Quanta Magazine
-
16
days ago
In Math, Rigor Is Vital. But Are Digitized Proofs Taking It Too Far?
In ancient Greece, Euclid showed that if you agree on a small list of preliminary principles, or axioms, you can use deductive reasoning to reveal all sorts of new mathematical truths. But although these early proofs, as mathematicians call them, were derived using the laws of logic, they sometimes also contained hidden, unstated assumptions or relied on misleading intuitions. In these cases… Source
Tech
-
Quanta Magazine
-
16
days ago
How Writing Changes Mathematical Thought
It’s natural to think of math as being fundamentally abstract. Whether it’s invented or discovered, its truths are so literally universal that even aliens would agree (so the thinking goes) that 2 and 2 make 4. The actual work of mathematics, though, typically involves something utterly earthbound: “making marks on paper or blackboards,” said David E. Dunning, a historian of mathematics and… Source
Tech
-
Quanta Magazine
-
18
days ago
Are Strings Still Our Best Hope for a Theory of Everything?
Fifty-eight years after it first appeared, string theory remains the most popular candidate for the “theory of everything,” the unified mathematical framework for all matter and forces in the universe. This is much to the chagrin of its rather vocal critics. “String theory is not dead; it’s undead and now walks around like a zombie eating people’s brains,” the former physicist Sabine Hossenfelder… Source
Tech
-
Quanta Magazine
-
21
days ago
The Jellies That Evolved a Different Way To Keep Time
The passage of the sun across the sky dawn, day, dusk, night drives the clock of life. Some species wake with the sun and sleep with the moon. Others do the opposite, and a few keep odd hours. These naturally driven, 24-hour biological cycles are known as circadian rhythms, and they do more than cue bedtime: They regulate hormones, metabolism, DNA repair, and more. When life falls out of sync… Source
Tech
-
Quanta Magazine
-
24
days ago
Quantum Cryptography Pioneers Win Turing Award
One afternoon in October 1979, Gilles Brassard was swimming outside a beachfront hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, when a stranger swam up to him and changed the course of his career. Without so much as an introduction, the man began describing a way to create currency that couldn’t be forged. The scheme was based on the laws of quantum physics a subject Brassard, a computer scientist… Source
Tech
-
Quanta Magazine
-
25
days ago
The Math That Explains Why Bell Curves Are Everywhere
No matter where you look, a bell curve is close by. Place a measuring cup in your backyard every time it rains and note the height of the water when it stops: Your data will conform to a bell curve. Record 100 people’s guesses at the number of jelly beans in a jar, and they’ll follow a bell curve. Measure enough women’s heights, men’s weights, SAT scores, marathon times you’ll always get the… Source
Tech
-
Quanta Magazine
-
28
days ago
Why Do Humanoid Robots Still Struggle With the Small Stuff?
The last time I covered the science of humanoid robots, the state of the art looked downright Orwellian by which I mean, “four legs good, two legs bad.” It was 2015. Boston Dynamics’ first “Spot” quadruped had taken YouTube by storm, confidently trotting up stairs and recovering from vicious kicks. Also popular at the time: humanoids falling down. Constantly. I felt sorrier for those tottering… Source
Tech
-
Quanta Magazine
-
30
days ago
Where Some See Strings, She Sees a Space-Time Made of Fractals
Astrid Eichhorn spends her days thinking about how the laws of physics change at the tiniest scales. Imagine zooming in closer and closer to the device on which you’re reading this article. Its apparently smooth screen quickly dissolves into a jiggling lattice of molecules, which in turn resolve into clouds of electrons buzzing around atomic nuclei. You dive into a nucleus… Source
