Space & Physics: Exclusive details on OpenAI's math “blowup”

Plus, The Starry Night’s celestial mystery unlocked                    

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October 22—This week, our top stories include coverage of Japan’s new mission to Mars, a satellite-stalking “space war” escalation in low-Earth orbit, the discovery of green stars, the astronomical mystery of van Gogh’s The Starry Night, and much more. We’re also delivering you the inside story of “the blowup,” offering exclusive new details about a fateful clash between OpenAI and human mathematicians over the company’s conquest of one of math’s hardest problems. Plus, enjoy new stories from our November issue about extreme cosmic explosions and why we probably live in a multiverse. Enjoy! Thoughts? Questions? Let me know via e-mail (lbillings@sciam.com), X or Bluesky. —Lee Billings, Senior Editor, Physical Sciences

Top Stories

The inside story behind OpenAI’s million-dollar math proof AI’s solution to the Navier-Stokes problem, and the details of how it happened, preview a chaotic future for math—and the world Joseph Howlett

Why we probably live in a multiverse The once-fringe quantum Many Worlds theory now seems much more likely Philipp Strasberg

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These extreme cosmic explosions are breaking physics Astronomers are finally figuring out what powers mysterious gamma-ray bursts Robin George Andrews

A Russian satellite is stalking a U.S. spacecraft in orbit. Experts are worried How close is too close for encounters between sensitive spacecraft orbiting Earth? With a mysterious approach to another satellite, Russia’s military may be trying to find out Mary Randolph

Some ‘white’ dwarf stars actually shine green, pink or purple The colors of dead stars come in a surprising rainbow of choices Phil Plait

Japan launches a probe to collect rocks from Mars’s moon Phobos The Martian Moons Exploration mission will aim to bring back samples from Phobos Adam Kovac

Astronomers unlock a mystery hidden in van Gogh’s The Starry Night A misidentified constellation could revise the timeline for Vincent van Gogh’s creation of his iconic painting Emma Gometz

Physicists trap a single antimatter particle for a month For the first time, scientists can make quantum measurements on a positron particle Clara Moskowitz

See one of the most iconic meteor showers at its peak this week The shower’s shooting stars originate from Halley’s Comet Mary Randolph

These are the most exciting potential human landing sites across the moon Besides building crewed outposts at the lunar south pole, where else should astronauts go on the moon? An authoritative new report has suggestions Leonard David

How many planets could fit in the solar system? As far-fetched as it may seem, quirks of orbital mechanics could allow dozens of planets to be packed around a star Phil Plait

A superconducting ‘brain’ chip races to keep up with fusion’s unruly plasma Researchers fed fusion data to a new chip to see whether it could spot signs that superhot plasma is about to go haywire Peter Hall

Google’s quantum Willow chip may be able to grow ‘magic states’ The work could help improve quantum computers’ accuracy in complex calculations Jacek Krywko

What We're Reading

A Chinese rocket deorbited over Minnesota and left this in a farmer’s cornfield | Ars Technica Can the Embattled Habitable Worlds Observatory Find a Second Earth? | Supercluster How did life arise? | The New York Times

From the Archive

Mathematicians marvel, and grumble, at OpenAI’s trove of new results The “slop drop” contains a number of groundbreaking proofs, but how it was generated remains unclear and contentious Joseph Howlett

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