The Future of Quantum Computing
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Can AI Models Show Us How People Learn? Impossible Languages Point a Way.
Certain grammatical rules never appear in any known language. By constructing artificial languages that have these rules, linguists can use neural networks to explore how people learn.
The Physicist Decoding the Nonbinary Nature of the Subatomic World
Inside the proton, quarks and gluons shift and morph their properties in ways that physicists are still struggling to understand. Rithya Kunnawalkam Elayavalli brings to the problem a perspective unlike many of their peers.
Rational or Not? This Basic Math Question Took Decades to Answer.
It’s surprisingly difficult to prove one of the most basic properties of a number: whether it can be written as a fraction. A broad new method can help settle this ancient question.
The Ocean Teems With Networks of Interconnected Bacteria
Nanotube bridge networks grow between the most abundant photosynthetic bacteria in the oceans, suggesting that the world is far more interconnected than anyone realized.
Why Computer Scientists Consult Oracles
Hypothetical devices that can quickly and accurately answer questions have become a powerful tool in computational complexity theory.
Scientists Re-Create the Microbial Dance That Sparked Complex Life
Evolution was fueled by endosymbiosis, cellular alliances in which one microbe makes a permanent home inside another. For the first time, biologists made it happen in the lab.
The Year in Computer Science
Researchers got a better look at the thoughts of chatbots, amateurs learned exactly how complicated simple systems can be, and quantum computers passed an essential milestone.
How Will We Know We’re Not Alone?
The first planet beyond our solar system was identified just 30 years ago. Since then, thousands have been found and characterized. As we look for more, exoplanet experts are also probing for signs of alien biospheres hundreds of light-years away. In this episode, co-host Janna Levin speaks with astrophysicist and astrobiologist Lisa Kaltenegger about how we’ll know we’re not alone in the cosmos.
The Year in Biology
Biologists used artificial intelligence to make discoveries about molecules and the brain, and overturned long-held assumptions about the immune system and RNA.