Q&A

The theoretical physicist and best-selling author finds inspiration in politics and philosophy for rethinking space and time.

Naomi Saphra thinks that most research into language models focuses too much on the finished product. She’s mining the history of their training for insights into why these systems work the way they do.

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.

Fan Chung, who has an Erdős number of 1, discusses the importance of connection — both human and mathematical.

Tony Tyson’s cameras revealed the universe’s dark contents. Now, with the Rubin Observatory’s 3.2-billion-pixel camera, he’s ready to study dark matter and dark energy in unprecedented detail.

Martin Schrimpf is crafting bespoke AI models that can induce control over high-level brain activity.

Manu Prakash works on the world’s most urgent problems and seemingly frivolous questions at the same time. They add up to a philosophy he calls “recreational biology.”

The physicist Sidney Nagel delights in solving mysteries of the universe that are hiding in plain sight.

Rose Yu has a plan for how to make AI better, faster and smarter — and it’s already yielding results.