The Nothing That Has the Potential to Be Anything
A recent example was published in 2025 by researchers at the European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser Facility near Hamburg,…
Scientists Found ‘Magic’ Particles in the Large Hadron Collider
In November, Quanta magazine published a feature on the detection of “magic” top quarks at CERN’s Large Hadron…
For the First Time, AI Analyzes Language as Well as a Human Expert
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Among the myriad abilities that humans possess, which…
The Oceans Are Going to Rise—but When?
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In May 2014, NASA announced at a press…
Game Theory Explains How Algorithms Can Drive Up Prices
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Imagine a town with two widget merchants. Customers…
Physicists Create a Thermometer for Measuring ‘Quantumness’
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. If there’s one law of physics that seems…
The ‘10 Martini’ Proof Connects Quantum Mechanics With Infinitely Intricate Mathematical Structures
But in some ways, the proof was a bit unsatisfying. Jitomirskaya and Avila had used a method that…
Distillation Can Make AI Models Smaller and Cheaper
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. The Chinese AI company DeepSeek released a chatbot…
The Quest to Find the Longest-Running Simple Computer Program
But just how much harder? In 1962, the mathematician Tibor Radó invented a new way to explore this…
The New Math of Quantum Cryptography
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Hard problems are usually not a welcome sight.…
The Hidden Ingredients Behind AI’s Creativity
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. We were once promised self-driving cars and robot…
AI Is Designing Bizarre New Physics Experiments That Actually Work
“LIGO is this huge thing that thousands of people have been thinking about deeply for 40 years,” said…