2021 in Review
Latest Articles
Why There’s No Single Best Way To Store Information
The math of data structures helps us understand how different storage systems come with different trade-offs between resources such as time and memory.
String Theory Can Now Describe a Universe That Has Dark Energy
In an unprecedented step, researchers crafted a detailed model compatible with the universe’s accelerated expansion.
Cells Use ‘Bioelectricity’ To Coordinate and Make Group Decisions
The discovery that tissues use electricity to expel unhealthy cells is part of a surge of renewed interest in the currents flowing through our bodies.
Using AI, Mathematicians Find Hidden Glitches in Fluid Equations
A $1 million prize awaits anyone who can show where the math of fluid flow breaks down. With specially trained AI systems, researchers have found a slew of new candidates in simpler versions of the problem.
Distinct AI Models Seem To Converge On How They Encode Reality
Is the inside of a vision model at all like a language model? Researchers argue that as the models grow more powerful, they may be converging toward a singular “Platonic” way to represent the world.
In Quantum Mechanics, Nothingness Is the Potential To Be Anything
Try as they might, scientists can’t truly rid a space or an object of its energy. But what “zero-point energy” really means is up for interpretation.
How Dad’s Fitness May Be Packaged and Passed Down in Sperm RNA
Research into how a father’s choices — such as diet, exercise, stress, nicotine use — may transfer traits to his children has become impossible to ignore.
The Year in Mathematics
Explore a shape that can’t pass through itself, a teenage prodigy, and two new kinds of infinity.
The Year in Physics
Physicists spotted a “terribly exciting” new black hole, doubled down on weakening dark energy, and debated the meaning of quantum mechanics.