What's up in

Abstractions blog

Latest Articles

Doubts Grow About the Biosignature Approach to Alien-Hunting

March 19, 2024

Recent controversies bode ill for the effort to detect life on other planets by analyzing the gases in their atmospheres.

Physicists Finally Find a Problem That Only Quantum Computers Can Do

March 12, 2024

Researchers have shown that a problem relating to the energy of a quantum system is easy for quantum computers but hard for classical ones.

Fresh X-Rays Reveal a Universe as Clumpy as Cosmology Predicts

March 4, 2024

By mapping the largest structures in the universe in X-rays, cosmologists have found striking agreement with their standard theoretical model of how the universe evolves.

Mollusk Eyes Reveal How Future Evolution Depends on the Past

February 29, 2024

The visual systems of an obscure group of mollusks provide a rare natural example of path-dependent evolution, in which a critical fork in the creatures’ past determined their evolutionary futures.

How Selective Forgetting Can Help AI Learn Better

February 28, 2024

Erasing key information during training results in machine learning models that can learn new languages faster and more easily.

‘Entropy Bagels’ and Other Complex Structures Emerge From Simple Rules

February 27, 2024

Simple rules in simple settings continue to puzzle mathematicians, even as they devise intricate tools to analyze them.

How Quickly Do Large Language Models Learn Unexpected Skills?

February 13, 2024

A new study suggests that so-called emergent abilities actually develop gradually and predictably, depending on how you measure them.

What Your Brain Is Doing When You’re Not Doing Anything

February 5, 2024

When your mind is wandering, your brain’s “default mode” network is active. Its discovery 20 years ago inspired a raft of research into networks of brain regions and how they interact with each other.

How to Build an Origami Computer

January 30, 2024

Two mathematicians have shown that origami can, in principle, be used to perform any possible computation.

Get highlights of the most important news delivered to your email inbox