Kristina Armitage/Quanta Magazine
A new proof shows that a knot some thought would contradict the famed slice-ribbon conjecture doesn’t.
A wave of research improves reinforcement learning algorithms by pre-training them as if they were human.
The critical brain hypothesis suggests that neural networks do their best work when connections are not too weak or too strong.
Theory has it that “Population III” stars brought light to the cosmos. The James Webb Space Telescope may have just glimpsed them.
Two teams have made photons act as if time were simultaneously flowing in two directions. The experiments demonstrate a way to potentially boost the performance of quantum devices.
Depression has often been blamed on low levels of serotonin in the brain. That answer is insufficient, but alternatives are coming into view and changing our understanding of the disease.
In three-dimensional space, the surface of a black hole must be a sphere. But a new result shows that in higher dimensions, an infinite number of configurations are possible.
Whether you’re passing secret notes in class or downloading images from a space probe, Reed-Solomon codes offer an ingenious way to embed information and correct for errors.
Wordle is a word game. But you can use math to optimize your chances of winning (without cheating).
Artificial intelligence has bested humans at problem-solving challenges like chess and Go. Is mathematics research next? Steven Strogatz speaks with mathematician Kevin Buzzard to learn about the effort to translate math into language that computers understand.
Illuminating basic science and math research through public service journalism.
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