A 50-Year Journey to the Limits of Knowledge

Plus: New black hole math; Active galactic nuclei everywhere; Probing biodiversity booms; Quantum energy teleportation on the Quanta Science Podcast

Math and Science News from Quanta Magazine View this email in your browser GRAPH THEORY | ALL TOPICS   Complexity Theory's Journey to the Limits of Knowledge by BEN BRUBAKER How hard is it to prove that problems are hard to solve? Meta-complexity theorists have been asking questions like this for decades. A string of recent results has started to deliver answers. Read the article COSMOLOGY   Math Proof Draws New Boundaries Around Black Hole Formation By STEVE NADIS For a half century, mathematicians have tried to define the exact circumstances under which a black hole is destined to exist. A new proof shows how a cube can help answer the question. Read the article Related:  Quantum Complexity Shows How to Escape Hawking's Black Hole Paradox By Charlie Wood ASTROPHYSICS   JWST Spots Giant Black Holes All Over the Early Universe By CHARLIE WOOD Giant black holes were supposed to be bit players in the early cosmic story. But recent James Webb Space Telescope observations are finding an unexpected abundance of the beasts. Read the article Related:  The Webb Space Telescope Will Rewrite Cosmic History. If It Works. By Natalie Wolchover Q&A   Andreas Wagner Pursues the Secrets to Evolutionary Success By VERONIQUE GREENWOOD Why did mammals, grasses and some other groups of organisms explode in diversity only after millions of years? The evolutionary biologist Andreas Wagner plumbs the secrets of those "sleeping beauties." Read the article  Related:  Evolution 'Landscapes' Predict What's Next for COVID Virus By Carrie Arnold (2022) QUANTA SCIENCE PODCAST   Physicists Use Quantum Mechanics to Pull Energy out of Nothing Story by CHARLIE WOOD; Podcast hosted by SUSAN VALOT The quantum energy teleportation protocol was proposed in 2008 and largely ignored. Now two independent experiments have shown that it works. Listen to the podcast Read the article Around the Web Acing the Turing Test What is now known as the "Turing test" was introduced in 1950 as a way to probe a machine's ability to think. In her YouTube video, Toby Hendy (Tibees) explains the arguments that Alan Turing outlined in his original paper. While chatbots can now successfully pass the Turing test, few people argue that they can truly think. In 2021, the complexity researcher Melanie Mitchell wrote for Quanta about what it means for AI systems to understand. A Magnetic Muon Moment Fermi lab physicists have improved the precision of their measurement of the "muon g-2 factor," the magnetic moment of the muon particle. The new value is consistent with previous results, reports Davide Castelvecchi for Nature. Some physicists saw the discrepancy between certain theoretical calculations of g-2 and the observed value as a sign of possible new physics. But as Natalie Wolchover reported for Quanta in 2021, alternative calculations are consistent with the measurement. Follow Quanta Simons Foundation 160 5th Avenue, 7th Floor New York, NY 10010 Unsubscribe | About Quanta Privacy Policy | Terms | Contact Us   Copyright © 2023 Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent division of the Simons Foundation