Plus: Rogue worlds dancing in pairs; The magic and mystery of recursive sequences; Pregnancy's immune trickery

Math and Science News from Quanta Magazine View this email in your browser REINFORCEMENT LEARNING | ALL TOPICS   AI System Beats Chess Puzzles With 'Artificial Brainstorming' By STEPHEN ORNES By bringing together disparate approaches, machines can reach a new level of creative problem-solving. Read the article Quanta is conducting a series of surveys to better serve our audience. Take our newsletter subscriber survey and you will be entered to win free Quanta merchandise. ASTROPHYSICS   Rogue Worlds Throw Planetary Ideas Out of Orbit By CHARLIE WOOD Scientists have recently discovered scores of free-floating worlds that defy classification. The new observations have forced them to rethink their theories of star and planet formation. Read the article Related:  JWST Spots Giant Black Holes All Over the Early Universe By Charlie Wood COMBINATORICS   The Astonishing Behavior of Recursive Sequences By ALEX STONE Some strange mathematical sequences are always whole numbers — until they're not. The puzzling patterns have revealed ties to graph theory and prime numbers, awing mathematicians. Read the blog Related:  The Connoisseur of Number Sequences By Erica Klarreich (2015) IMMUNOLOGY   During Pregnancy, a Fake 'Infection' Protects the Fetus By ANNIE MELCHOR Cells in the placenta have an unusual trick for activating gentle immune defenses and keeping them turned on when no infection is present. It involves crafting and deploying a fake virus. Read the blog   Around the Web Put Your Heads Together A new genetic analysis of starfish reveals that they are all head, no body. This surprising finding could offer hints about why they evolved to have such unique radial symmetry, reports Lori Youmshajekian for Scientific American. The physicist Nikta Fakhri believes that starfish hold clues to even deeper biological mysteries. In 2023, Charlie Wood interviewed Fakhri for Quanta about how studies of starfish helped her see how physical phenomena such as symmetry breaking define life. A Mounting Meltdown Glaciers in Greenland are melting twice as fast as they were a few decades ago, reports Delger Erdenesanaa for The New York Times. They have shrunk more than 35% in volume since 1978. Melting at the poles is locked in a feedback loop with global climate change: As the ice melts, it reflects less of the sun's energy back to space. In 2020, Shannon Hall wrote for Quanta about an Arctic mission to study the dynamics of the melting ice. Follow Quanta Unsubscribe | About Quanta | My Bookmarks Privacy Policy | Terms | Contact Us   Copyright © 2023 Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent division of the Simons Foundation Simons Foundation 160 5th Avenue, 7th Floor New York, NY 10010