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Category: Science/mathematics

A neglected particle from the dawn of time might explain why everything in the universe exists

A neglected particle from the dawn of time might explain why everything in the universe exists

Live Science reports: A neglected “ghost particle” may have dominated the universe right after the Big Bang ‪—‬ changing how the cosmos expanded in its first moments and reshaping the conditions under which matter won out over antimatter, a new study suggests. In other words, it may explain why anything exists at all. The particle, a hypothetical “right-handed” neutrino, briefly could have held more energy than everything else in the infant universe combined, which would have sped up cosmic expansion…

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Smithsonian scientists create most detailed simulation yet of the early universe

Smithsonian scientists create most detailed simulation yet of the early universe

Smithsonian: The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and Nancy Roman Space Telescope are revealing the universe’s earliest chapters in extraordinary detail. To help astronomers understand what they are seeing, researchers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian have developed “Lumina,” one of the largest and most detailed simulations ever created of the early universe. Published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the new model recreates how ordinary matter, dark matter and radiation interacted during the universe’s…

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Mathematics is as much an expression of the human spirit as music and literature

Mathematics is as much an expression of the human spirit as music and literature

Steven Strogatz writes: It’s 4:26 a.m., and I’m walking around the house while my wife sleeps upstairs. I’m feeling disoriented and discombobulated, just as I have for months, since May, when AI came for math. The leaves are ablaze here in Ithaca, fiery reds and oranges, and I saw them swirling around in my backyard yesterday, following the streamlines of an eddy described by the Navier-Stokes equations. You’ve heard of Navier-Stokes, right? By now you must have—in early September, OpenAI…

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Why a world without friction is a world without progress

Why a world without friction is a world without progress

Jennifer R Vail writes: In conversations, few words catch my attention faster than ‘friction’ – and especially talk of making things frictionless. From the workplace to grocery shopping, our societies seem to be striving to remove friction from everything. The motivation appears to be that decreasing resistance makes life easier and smoother. Having spent a career as a tribologist, studying friction, wear and lubrication scientifically, I have some opinions on this. I’ll confess that, in most of my career, I…

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Corporate ‘orbital data centre’ proposals are dangerous for humanity

Corporate ‘orbital data centre’ proposals are dangerous for humanity

A computer-generated image of objects in Earth orbit that are already being tracked, before any massive new satellite megaconstellations. Approximately 95 per cent of the objects are space debris in the form of non-functional satellites. (NASA) By Samantha Lawler, University of Regina SpaceX has started a trend. More American companies are betting that they can beat the laws of physics by launching thousands of enormous satellites to create orbital “AI data centres” with names like Cowboy Space’s Stampede. Space commercialization…

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Scientists call for international body to oversee advanced AI, saying voluntary commitments are not enough

Scientists call for international body to oversee advanced AI, saying voluntary commitments are not enough

Reuters reports: Around 400 scientists, including AI pioneers Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, on Tuesday called for an international body ​to oversee containment standards and incident reporting for advanced cyber-capable ‌AI systems. The proposed body would set industry-wide containment standards and maintain a registry of significant security incidents, which the scientists said should eventually be made ​public. In an open letter, the researchers said frontier AI models ​should initially be air-gapped from external networks and subject ⁠to independent oversight, arguing…

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Why AI must not become a substitute for mathematical research

Why AI must not become a substitute for mathematical research

  Giordano Scarciotti, Imperial College London: AI is solving mathematical problems that have resisted some of the world’s greatest mathematicians for decades. Why are mathematicians concerned instead of celebrating? The answer reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes mathematics valuable. From Euler’s seven bridges of Königsberg to the race to the Moon, I explain why solving a problem is not necessarily the same as advancing science, and why the real value of mathematical research often lies in the discoveries made…

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‘Breathtaking,’ ‘devastating’: Mathematics reels after new OpenAI release

‘Breathtaking,’ ‘devastating’: Mathematics reels after new OpenAI release

The New York Times reports: “If a human did this, it would be an instant Fields Medal, no questions asked.” That’s how Alex Kontorovich, chair of the department of mathematics at Rutgers, responded to an A.I.-generated proof that OpenAI, the artificial intelligence giant, released on Tuesday. And that single proof — worthy, in Dr. Kontorovich’s assessment on social media, of arguably the highest honor in the field of mathematics — was just one among more than 350 findings that the…

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The new science that has oil companies running scared

The new science that has oil companies running scared

Jeff Goodell writes: On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Suncor Energy, Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, a case that could give fossil fuel companies a get-out-of-jail-free card for the harms caused by climate change. That is not exactly how Kannon Shanmugam — who represents Suncor and Exxon Mobil, another petitioner in the case — framed the argument. He said that dozens of active lawsuits that use state tort law to sue fossil fuel companies…

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National Science Foundation diverted $1.4 billion in funds mandated by Congress

National Science Foundation diverted $1.4 billion in funds mandated by Congress

The New York Times reports: The National Science Foundation, one of the biggest sources of federal research funding, withheld $1.4 billion that Congress had intended for research over the course of the past year, according to internal data reviewed by The New York Times. The extraordinary move — holding back about one-fifth of the N.S.F.’s primary research budget — is the latest sign of how the Trump administration is finding creative ways to work around Congress. Lawmakers from both parties…

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A CERN for AI

A CERN for AI

Elliot Jones, Senior Researcher, Ada Lovelace Institute, writes: Efforts such as the UK’s AI Safety Summit, and the follow-up AI Seoul Summit, have aimed to start an international discussion around AI safety and have led to the creation of national AI safety institutes in the UK, the US, Japan and Canada. There is a shared ambition to create an international AI safety network, and these institutes have begun to sign bilateral cooperation agreements. However, there is not currently a single,…

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Did Anthropic’s AI genuinely make a scientific discovery on its own?

Did Anthropic’s AI genuinely make a scientific discovery on its own?

The New York Times reports: When Anthropic, the artificial intelligence giant, unveiled findings from its new biology lab last week, its scientists claimed to have used A.I. agents to discover new enzymes with promise for biotechnology. Some scientists were quick to cast doubt on the achievement. Then Mario Rodríguez Mestre, a computational biologist, said this weekend that he and his colleagues had been studying the enzymes and their associated molecules — which Anthropic calls ARTs — for four years. Dr….

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In an $80 motel room, a discovery sheds light on the origins of life

In an $80 motel room, a discovery sheds light on the origins of life

The New York Times reports: On a spring day last year, Andrew Willoughby drove three and a half hours to a cheap motel in Nags Head, N.C. From the parking lot, he texted a stranger he had met online. Julia Van Etten appeared, ushering him past a “Do Not Disturb” sign into one of the motel’s $80 rooms, which she had secretly turned into a makeshift lab. Jugs of brackish water lined the walls. Buckets overflowed with hunks of marsh…

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Four Islamic polymaths prove breadth beats specialisation

Four Islamic polymaths prove breadth beats specialisation

Mariam Sabri writes: This semester, my students are learning about four polymaths who shaped Islamic science: al-Biruni, Alhazen, Avicenna and al-Khwarizmi. Their circumstances could hardly have been more different: one wrote his way out of scarcity; one was held under house arrest for a decade; one distilled an era’s medical knowledge into a text that ruled European universities for 500 years; and the last worked at the largest research institution of his age. But each shared the same underlying instinct:…

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Why rivers are so mathematical

Why rivers are so mathematical

Natalie Wolchover writes: A river has my heart. It’s not the austere, black Thames winding through London, where I was born, but a lazy green one 5,000 miles away, where I spent my adolescence: the Blanco River in Texas. My maternal ancestors have dipped into its waters for generations, as I have on countless summer days. The Blanco is a tributary of the San Marcos, which flows into the Guadalupe, and on into the Gulf of Mexico. You can probably…

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More than half of Earth’s migratory bird species are declining – here’s how we can still save them

More than half of Earth’s migratory bird species are declining – here’s how we can still save them

The spoon-billed sandpiper, a small wading bird, flies nearly 5,000 miles (8,000 km) on its annual migration. Tareq’s Photography/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA By Peter P. Marra, Georgetown University and Nathan W. Cooper, Smithsonian Institution Every year, billions of migratory birds connect the world’s continents, oceans and ecosystems as they undertake epic journeys between their foraging habitats and their breeding grounds. A bobolink (Dolichonyx oryzivorus) leaves its breeding grasslands of North America for the Pampas of South America. A Newell’s shearwater (Puffinus…

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