Abstractions blog

The root of today’s quantum revolution was John Stewart Bell’s 1964 theorem showing that quantum mechanics really permits instantaneous connections between far-apart locations.

The DNA of some viruses doesn’t use the same four nucleotide bases found in all other life. New work shows how this exception is possible and hints that it could be more common than we think.

A temporal pattern of activity observed in human brains may explain how we can learn so quickly.

These ultrabright flashes have recently been tracked for days, upending ideas about the cataclysms that create them.

For all their triumphs, AI systems can’t seem to generalize the concepts of “same” and “different.” Without that, researchers worry, the quest to create truly intelligent machines may be hopeless.

Animals sculpt the optical properties of their tissues at the nanoscale to give themselves “structural colors.” New work is piecing together how they do it.

Superconductivity has been discovered in graphene devices without any twists, suggesting the form of superconductivity in the material might be mundane after all.

Scientists have long struggled to understand how common planets form. A new supercomputer simulation shows that the missing ingredient may be magnetism.

In some symbiotic partnerships, an RNA-based mechanism may sabotage the growth of greedy hosts.