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Illuminating math and science. Supported by @SimonsFdn. 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting.
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Keeping up with the latest in math and AI doesn’t have to be hard. Sign up for our Transformation newsletter, a new weekly digest tracking the rapid changes happening in mathematics — and how mathematicians are reckoning with them.
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Mathematician Nicolas de Condorcet was a passionate believer in democracy. He also discovered a frustrating paradox within it. Now, mathematicians have found that this voting paradox has a strange topological shape. Get the full story on The Quanta Podcast:
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Matthew Pusey took on Einstein’s notion of reality and — without originally intending to — delivered a killing blow.
We love to talk about what’s going on inside our own heads. Can LLMs do the same?
Introducing the Transformation newsletter, Quanta Magazine’s weekly bulletin chronicling the latest news in math and AI — and what these changes mean for mathematics as a whole. Subscribe today:
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Muon-catalyzed fusion may never produce limitless energy, writes George Musser in this week’s Qualia, but the exotic atoms and molecules created in this exciting research program are stretching the boundaries of physics.
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LLM research could teach us a whole lot about how humans think. Large language models offer “a kind of sandbox for studying what sorts of mechanisms, what sorts of pressures, might have led to human introspective capacity,” said philosopher Harvey Lederman.
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Some light reading for your Friday afternoon: Is reality dead? @walkingthedot reports:
What’s on your mind right now? It may seem like a simple inquiry. But among philosophers and psychologists, introspection is a subject of active debate. Researchers are using LLMs as an empirical testing ground for some of humanity’s deepest questions.
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New on Transformation: Mathematicians race to simplify AI proofs
@kkakaes reports:
Qualia essays go where curiosity leads. This week, George Musser examines a little-known research program called muon-catalyzed fusion.
After over a century of studying introspection in humans and animals, researchers are beginning to explore the phenomenon in unlikely new subjects — large language models. These systems, which are based on mathematical structures called neural networks, excel at cognitive tasks that until recently seemed exclusive to humans. Can they introspect as well? @benbenbrubaker reports:
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The interstellar medium, a thin fog filling our universe, seems to be much less stable than we previously thought. This could help researchers answer questions about how quickly stars can form.
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“Fusion in general has been a graveyard of dreams. I grew up on the dream it evoked.”
Mathematicians have heated disagreements over which is the best voting system. The reality is that all of them are mathematically flawed. Tune in to The Quanta Podcast to learn why the math of democracy never quite works out.
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I'm on the Quanta podcast today talking about the mathematics of voting.
How is democracy like a Klein bottle? Find out on this week’s episode of The Quanta Podcast, just in time for Election Day:
Two years ago, a 3D map showed us the density of dust up to 4,000 light-years away from our sun. This year, scientists took the dust’s temperature — and found a large portion of it to be unstable.
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Lisa Sauermann and an old friend recently settled a major conjecture. By chance, the problem ties back to one she solved on the International Mathematical Olympiad as a high school student. She won gold four times.
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