Archivo: Quanta

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For decades, mathematicians have been inching forward on a problem about which sets contain evenly spaced patterns of three numbers. Last month, two computer scientists blew past all of those results.

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Large language models like ChatGPT are now big enough that they’ve started to display startling, unpredictable behaviors.

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Using “refreshingly old” tools, mathematicians resolved a 50-year-old conjecture about how to categorize important functions called modular forms, with consequences for number theory and theoretical physics.

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By replacing thousands of equations with just one, ecology modelers can more accurately assess how close fragile environments are to a disastrous “tipping point.”

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Feelings of loneliness prompt changes in the brain that further isolate people from social contact.

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Several real-life pathogens can change a host’s behavior against their will. Here’s what we know about these zombie-like infections.

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Mathematicians have struggled to understand the moduli space of graphs. A new paper uses tools from physics to peek inside.

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The neocortex of our brain is the seat of our intellect. New data suggests that mammals created it with new types of cells that they developed only after their evolutionary split from reptiles.

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Richard Feynman’s path integral is both a powerful prediction machine and a philosophy about how the world is. But physicists are still struggling to figure out how to use it, and what it means.

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A new proof shows that a knot some thought would contradict the famed slice-ribbon conjecture doesn’t.