Tag: Quanta Magazine

Large Language Models’ Emergent Abilities Are a Mirage

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.Two years ago, in a project called the Beyond the Imitation Game benchmark, or BIG-bench,...

Starquakes Might Solve the Mysteries of Stellar Magnetism

That was a surprise—and a possible indication that something crucial was missing in those models: magnetism.Stellar SymmetryLast year, Gang Li, an asteroseismologist now at...

How Many Microbes Does It Take to Make You Sick?

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.For a pathogen to make us sick, it must overcome a lot. First it has...

The Secret of How Cells Make ‘Dark Oxygen’ Without Light

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.Scientists have come to realize that in the soil and rocks beneath our feet there...

‘Embryo Models’ Challenge the Legal, Ethical, and Biological Concepts of an ‘Embryo’

Meanwhile, Hanna’s team in Israel was growing mouse embryo models in a similar way, as they described in a paper in Cell that was...

A Computer-Assisted Proof Solves the ‘Packing Coloring’ Problem

Heule, however, found the discovery of past results invigorating. It demonstrated that other researchers found the problem important enough to work on, and confirmed...

A New Computer Proof ‘Blows Up’ Centuries-Old Fluid Equations

For centuries, mathematicians have sought to understand and model the motion of fluids. The equations that describe how ripples crease the surface of a...

At Long Last, Mathematical Proof That Black Holes Are Stable

In 1963, the mathematician Roy Kerr found a solution to Einstein’s equations that precisely described the spacetime outside what we now call a rotating...

A Brain Chemical Helps Neurons Know When to Start a Movement

By washing through the brain, neuromodulators “allow you to govern the excitability of a large region of the brain more or less in the...

Neural Noise Shows the Uncertainty of Our Memories

In the moment between reading a phone number and punching it into your phone, you may find that the digits have mysteriously gone astray—even...

Symmetries Reveal Clues About the Holographic Universe

We’ve known about gravity since Newton’s apocryphal encounter with the apple, but we’re still struggling to make sense of it. While the other three...

How the Physics of Resonance Shapes Reality

Almost anytime physicists announce that they’ve discovered a new particle, whether it’s the Higgs boson or the recently bagged double-charm tetraquark, what they’ve actually...

A New Theory for Systems That Defy Newton’s Third Law

The flocking of birds can also be viewed as a breaking of symmetry: Instead of flying in random directions, they align like the spins...

How Computationally Complex Is a Single Neuron?

Our mushy brains seem a far cry from the solid silicon chips in computer processors, but scientists have a long history of comparing the...

To Learn More Quickly, Brain Cells Break Their DNA

Faced with a threat, the brain has to act fast, its neurons making new connections to learn what might spell the difference between life...

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