Quanta

Quanta

[:es]Can Computers Be Mathematicians?[:]

Artificial intelligence has bested humans at problem-solving challenges like chess and Go. Is mathematics research next? Steven Strogatz speaks with mathematician Kevin Buzzard to learn about the effort to translate […]
Quanta

[:es]Life Helps Make Almost Half of All Minerals on Earth[:]

A new origins-based system for classifying minerals reveals the huge geochemical imprint that life has left on Earth. It could help us identify other worlds with life too.
Quanta

[:es]Controversy Continues Over Whether Hot Water Freezes Faster Than Cold[:]

Decades after a Tanzanian teenager initiated study of the “Mpemba effect,” the effort to confirm or refute it is leading physicists toward new theories about how substances relax to equilibrium.
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[:es]The Spooky Quantum Phenomenon You’ve Never Heard Of[:]

Quantum computers may derive their power from the “magical” way that properties of particles change depending on the context.
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[:es]Surfaces So Different Even a Fourth Dimension Can’t Make Them the Same[:]

For decades mathematicians have searched for a specific pair of surfaces that can’t be transformed into each other in four-dimensional space. Now they’ve found them.
Quanta

[:es]The Brain Has a ‘Low-Power Mode’ That Blunts Our Senses[:]

Neuroscientists uncovered an energy-saving mode in vision-system neurons that works at the cost of being able to see fine-grained details.
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[:es]Astronomers Reimagine the Making of the Planets[:]

Observations of faraway planets have forced a near-total rewrite of the story of how our solar system came to be.
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[:es]Brain-Signal Proteins Evolved Before Animals Did[:]

Some animal neuropeptides have been around longer than nervous systems.
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[:es]The Secret Math Behind Mind-Reading Magic Tricks[:]

Four puzzle solutions reveal different ways to divine someone’s hidden number with impossibly little information.