Mary Wootters discusses how error-correcting codes work, and how they are essential for reliable communication and storage.
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The Pursuit of Life Where It Seems Unimaginable
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A decade ago, Karen Lloyd discovered single-celled microbes living beneath the seafloor. Now she studies how they can survive in Earth’s crust, possibly for hundreds or thousands of years, and push life’s limits of time and energy.
Quasicrystals Spill Secrets of Their Formation
New studies of the ‘platypus of materials’ help explain how their atoms arrange themselves into orderly, but nonrepeating, patterns.
New Physics-Inspired Proof Probes the Borders of Disorder
For decades, mathematicians have struggled to understand matrices that reflect both order and randomness, like those that model semiconductors. A new method could change that.
The AI Was Fed Sloppy Code. It Turned Into Something Evil.
The new science of “emergent misalignment” explores how PG-13 training data — insecure code, superstitious numbers or even extreme-sports advice — can open the door to AI’s dark side.
‘It’s a Mess’: A Brain-Bending Trip to Quantum Theory’s 100th Birthday Party
Hundreds of physicists (and a few journalists) journeyed to Helgoland, the birthplace of quantum mechanics, and grappled with what they have and haven’t learned about reality.
New Method Is the Fastest Way To Find the Best Routes
A canonical problem in computer science is to find the shortest route to every point in a network. A new approach beats the classic algorithm taught in textbooks.
Earth’s Core Appears To Be Leaking Up and Out of Earth’s Surface
Strong new evidence suggests that primordial material from the planet’s center is somehow making its way out. Continent-size entities anchored to the core-mantle boundary might be involved.
At 17, Hannah Cairo Solved a Major Math Mystery
After finding the homeschooling life confining, the teen petitioned her way into a graduate class at Berkeley, where she ended up disproving a 40-year-old conjecture.
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