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Cryptography Tricks Make a Hard Problem a Little Easier
Researchers have shown how to find the simplest description of a data set faster than by simply checking every possibility.
Hopes of Big Bang Discoveries Ride on a Future Spacecraft
Physicists and cosmologists will have a new probe of primordial processes when Europe launches the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) next decade.
Pleasure or Pain? He Maps the Neural Circuits That Decide.
The work of the neuroscientist Ishmail Abdus-Saboor has opened up a world of insights into precisely how much pleasure and pain animals experience during different forms of touch.
Geometers Engineer New Tools to Wrangle Spacecraft Orbits
Mathematicians think abstract tools from a field called symplectic geometry might help with planning missions to far-off moons and planets.
How Do Machines ‘Grok’ Data?
By apparently overtraining them, researchers have seen neural networks discover novel solutions to problems.
My Fantastic Voyage at Quanta Magazine
Founding editor-in-chief Thomas Lin looks back at a decade of Quanta journalism and forward to what’s next for the magazine.
Viruses Finally Reveal Their Complex Social Life
New research has uncovered a social world of viruses full of cheating, cooperation and other intrigues, suggesting that viruses make sense only as members of a community.
Can Information Escape a Black Hole?
Black holes are inescapable traps for most of what falls into them — but there can be exceptions. The theoretical physicist Leonard Susskind speaks with co-host Janna Levin about the black hole information paradox and how it has propelled modern physics.
Avi Wigderson, Complexity Theory Pioneer, Wins Turing Award
The prolific researcher found deep connections between randomness and computation and spent a career influencing cryptographers, complexity researchers and more.