Tech experts have long championed quantum computers as the next generation of machine, promising to solve big problems in lightning-fast time, but the delicate chips exist in only a handful of labs. In the race to build the largest one yet, Google shot ahead in March when it unveiled Bristlecone, a 72-qubit device with low […]
Quantum computing gets its “Hello World” moment. Read More »
How much beauty does it take to launch a ship? Howmuch does a male physicist’s beard grow in a second?And what is the optimal length of a lecture? Thesemay not seem like typical phenomena you need tomeasure, but they’ve nonetheless inspired creativesouls to forge new units of measurement.They are just some of the weird scales
The tallest known tree in the world is in Redwood National Park, a few hundred kilometres north of San Francisco, just inland from the Pacific coast. You won’t find its location marked on official hiking maps, however. That’s because the two amateur naturalists who discovered the tree in 2006 – Michael Taylor and Chris Atkins – have tried to keep
Top Tips fom Tree Tops Read More »
On a clear, sunny Tuesday afternoon, last August, Andreas Fath climbed out of a river in Paducah, Ky. A small crowd was on hand to witness his setting a new world record. This man had just finished swimming the entire length of the Tennessee River — 1,049 kilometers (652 miles). And he did it in
On January 9, 2018, a trio of federal judges made history when they ruled that the boundaries of North Carolina’s congressional voting districts gave an unfair advantage to Republican candidates. It was the first case in the nation in which a federal court had declared congressional maps unconstitutional because of intentional bias in favor of
Math tools send legislators back to the drawing board Read More »
FOR MORE THAN a century, pathologists have identified cancer by looking at slides containing tissue stained with dyes to make the malignant cells more visible. Spotting aberrant cells among healthy ones is similar in spirit to recognizing familiar faces or objects in pictures. “Our brains are very good at recognizing patterns in images,” says physician and
Recognizing AI’s potential Read More »
Hurricane Harvey devastated the Houston area when it stalled over southeastern Texas in August 2017. In the weeks that followed, Hurricane Irma traveled up the mainland of Florida, and Hurricane Maria pummeled Puerto Rico. The year 2017 would become the most expensive hurricane season on record. For decades, climate researchers using computer models have predicted
How does climate change influence extreme weather? Read More »
I’m proud to announce that my book Math Art: Truth, Beauty, and Equations, will be published in April 2019 by Sterling. A preview of the book was published in the August 2018 issue of Scientific American. Shown here: Aurora Australis by Carlo H. Séquin.
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The antagonists in video games tend to be monsters or zombies, but Quantum Moves pits players against the fundamental laws of nature. The player’s goal is straightforward: Move an atom from one place to another as quickly and efficiently as possible while a timer counts down the seconds.Waves represent the changing probability distribution of the
Quantum games aim to demystify heady science Read More »
Frank Borman was probably the first person to barf in space. Borman was part of NASA’s Apollo 8 mission, which lifted off a launch pad in Florida on December 21, 1968. Over the next six days, the mission made history as it circled the moon and returned home. But Borman, who led the mission, became
En route to Mars, astronauts may face big health risks Read More »
