Maria Chudnovsky reflects on her journey in graph theory, her groundbreaking solution to the long-standing perfect graph problem, and the unexpected ways this abstract field intersects with everyday life.
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Physicists Start To Pin Down How Stars Forge Heavy Atoms
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The precursors of heavy elements might arise in the plasma underbellies of swollen stars or in smoldering stellar corpses. They definitely exist in East Lansing, Michigan.
Researchers Uncover Hidden Ingredients Behind AI Creativity
Image generators are designed to mimic their training data, so where does their apparent creativity come from? A recent study suggests that it’s an inevitable by-product of their architecture.
When Did Nature Burst Into Vivid Color?
Scientists reconstructed 500 million years of evolutionary history to reveal which came first: colorful signals or the color vision needed to see them.
A New Pyramid-Like Shape Always Lands the Same Side Up
A tetrahedron is the simplest Platonic solid. Mathematicians have now made one that’s stable only on one side, confirming a decades-old conjecture.
Is Mathematics Mostly Chaos or Mostly Order?
Two new notions of infinity challenge a long-standing plan to define the mathematical universe.
How AI Models Are Helping to Understand — and Control — the Brain
Martin Schrimpf is crafting bespoke AI models that can induce control over high-level brain activity.
The Ecosystem Dynamics That Can Make or Break an Invasion
By speedrunning ecosystems with microbes, researchers revealed intrinsic properties that may make a community susceptible to invasion.
Is Gravity Just Entropy Rising? Long-Shot Idea Gets Another Look.
A new argument explores how the growth of disorder could cause massive objects to move toward one another. Physicists are both interested and skeptical.
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See all videosWhy Some People Don’t ‘See’ Mental Imagery: Aphantasia
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The Thought Experiments That Fray the Fabric of Space-Time
These three imagined scenarios lead many physicists to doubt that space-time is fundamental.
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