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Guillem Casasús Xercavins / Quanta The Easy Questions That Stump Computers
What happens when you stack logs in a fireplace and drop a match? Some of the smartest machines have no idea.
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Lukas Vojir / Quanta The Case of the Missing Bacteria
Microbes in our gut are key to staying healthy, but scientists are coming to realize that isn’t the case for all animals.
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Dave Whyte / Quanta Magazine What Einstein May Have Gotten Wrong
The Swiss physicist Nicolas Gisin is using an old form of math to rethink the very basics of what we know about time.
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EGO / Virgo Collaboration / Perciballi / Quanta The Search for the Perfect Mirror
Your bedroom mirror does the trick in the morning, but for scientists studying gravitational waves, even the tiniest of imperfections can make a huge difference.
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Zoë van Dijk / Quanta Magazine An Unexpected Ally in the War With Bacteria
Scientists have struggled to develop new antibiotics. Enter: the machines.
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Olena Shmahalo / Quanta Magazine A Tiny, Lab-Size Wormhole Could Shatter Our Sense of Reality
How scientists plan to set up two black holes and a wormhole on an ordinary tabletop
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Nikhef / Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics … Gravitational Waves Have Revealed a Stellar Mystery
A surprising star collision is making scientists rethink what they know about the universe.
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Corinne Reid / Quanta Magazine Our Instructions for AI Will Never Be Specific Enough
AI excels at following human commands. That may be a problem.
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Olena Shmahalo / Quanta Magazine Giant, Mysterious Blobs Are Lurking at the Edge of Earth’s Core
Some seismologists think two massive anomalies under Africa and the Pacific are made of ancient, smoldering rock.
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Maciej Rebisz Three Physicists Stumbled Upon a Striking Mathematical Discovery
Describing neutrino oscillations is notoriously tricky. The search for a shortcut led to unexpected places.
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Google / Reuters Why Two Tech Giants Are Arguing About Quantum Computers
Google says it has reached a major computational milestone. IBM says not so fast.
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Jason Lyon / Quanta What a New Theory of Attention Says About Consciousness
Filtering out distractions might be more important for the brain than highlighting important information.
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Olena Shamlhalo / Quanta Rumors Are Swirling Around a Black-Hole Discovery
The object might be as massive as 100 suns—if it even exists.
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Patryk Hardziej / Quanta Magazine The Dispute at the Heart of Cosmology
The universe is expanding, but no one can agree on exactly how fast.
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Ricardo Bessa / Quanta Biological Clocks Could Drive the Immune System
New research suggests parasites and viruses may organize their life cycles around a host’s circadian rhythms, and even disrupt them to gain an edge.
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Lucy Reading-Ikkanda / Quanta Magazine Rewards Warp the Brain’s Inner GPS
Cells that control an animal’s spatial awareness can reorient themselves to favor locations that are full of food.
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P van Dokkum / NASA / AP Moving Stars Might Speed the Spread of Alien Life
Intelligent planet-hoppers could populate a galaxy in as little as 650,000 years.
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Todd Bretl Underwater Photography The Glowing Squid That Illuminates the Strangeness of Nature
The world is full of unexpected relationships.
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Alexandre Tamisier / Quanta A Hexagonal Theory of Memory
The same neural system could map both the physical and conceptual worlds.
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Simon Gingins / Courtesy of Quanta A Classic Test of Animals’ Minds Has a Fish Problem
An intelligent fish has stirred up a debate about how to measure self-awareness among animals—and what self-awareness even is in the first place.
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