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explainers

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Illustration of asteroids in space that are interconnected into a structure like that of the amino acid glycine.
explainers

Inside Ancient Asteroids, Gamma Rays Made Building Blocks of Life

By John Rennie +1 authors
Allison Parshall
January 4, 2023
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A new radiation-based mechanism adds to the ways that amino acids could have been made in space and brought to the young Earth.

A purple key drawn on a lattice of points.
explainers

How Cryptography’s Quantum-Safe Future Will Work

By Leila Sloman
November 9, 2022
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Lattice cryptography promises to protect secrets from the attacks of far-future quantum computers.

astrophysics

The Enduring Mystery of the Dragonfly 44 Galaxy

By Lyndie Chiou
November 7, 2022
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A growing catalog of huge but dim galaxies such as Dragonfly 44 is forcing astronomers to invent new theories of galactic evolution.

cryptography

How Do You Prove a Secret?

By Sheon Han
October 11, 2022
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Zero-knowledge proofs allow researchers to prove their knowledge without divulging the knowledge itself.

Drawing of a man connected by viruses to mice, horses, camels and more animals
Quantized Columns

What We Know About Monkeypox

By Tara C. Smith
September 29, 2022
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Even though we’ve learned a lot about this relative of smallpox, some mysteries remain due to a lack of political will.

A spacecraft, laptop, QR code and CD
information theory

How Mathematical Curves Enable Advanced Communication

By Jordana Cepelewicz
September 19, 2022
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A simple geometric idea has been used to power advances in information theory, cryptography and even blockchain technology.

A frog leaps out of the frame of the video.
biomechanics

Record-Breaking Robot Highlights How Animals Excel at Jumping

By Yasemin Saplakoglu
September 14, 2022
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Robots can surpass the limitations on how high and far animals can jump, but their success only underscores nature’s ingenuity in making the most of what’s available.

Illustration of thumbs flipping coins.
information theory

How Shannon Entropy Imposes Fundamental Limits on Communication

By Kevin Hartnett
September 6, 2022
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What’s a message, really? Claude Shannon recognized that the elemental ingredient is surprise.

An illustration that includes a triangular network overlaid by images of spinning particles.
explainers

The Spooky Quantum Phenomenon You’ve Never Heard Of

By Katie McCormick
June 22, 2022
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Quantum computers may derive their power from the “magical” way that properties of particles change depending on the context.


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