AI Starts to Sift Through String Theory'...

There’s no scientific consensus about what makes living things so different from inorganic material. Some scientists cite replication or metabolism. Others have another answer: Living organisms are different because they do stuff — for reasons. On this episode of The Quanta Podca ... Show More

You’re carrying around in your head a model of how the world works. Will AI systems need to do the same?The article ‘World Models,’ an Old Idea in AI, Mount a Comeback first appeared on Quanta Magazine. 

In 1992, mathematicians Dave Bayer and Persi Diaconis proved that seven riffle shuffles are enough to shuffle a deck of cards — but only if you can cut your deck with precision. Decades later, a new proof has finally extended the finding to less precise cuts. On this episode of T ... Show More

<p>Last time, we introduced the biggest open problem in theoretical physics - the problem of combining gravity with quantum mechanics. In this first part of a three-part series, we introduce the leading candidate for how to do that: String Theory.<br/><br/>For ad-free episodes an ... Show More

We're still in the dark about what 95 percent of our universe is made of — and the standard model for understanding particle physics has hit a limit. What's the next step forward? Particle physicist Alex Keshavarzi digs into the first results of the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermila ... Show More

Last month, physicists at Fermilab in Illinois found that tiny subatomic particles called muons were wobbling strangely. This small observation could transform the future of particle physics, potentially pointing toward undiscovered particles or maybe even a new force of nature. ... Show More

<p>We pick up the story of string theory and explore the explosion of interest it experienced in the mid 1980s.<br/><br/>For ad-free episodes and other exclusives, join us for $3 a month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/whythisuniverse</p><p><a rel="payment" href="https://patreon. ... Show More

How artificial intelligence is accelerating discoveries – and raising profound questions – about the future of physics 

Experts are starting to plan for the moment when a quantum computer large enough to crack the backbone of the math that keeps things secret will be turned on. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices 

<p>Learn how extra dimensions of space might appear to us, and what physicists have done to try to find them.<br/><br/>To support our show and get ad-free episodes and other exclusives, join us for $3 a month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/whythisuniverse</p><p><a rel="payment" ... Show More

Depending on your social media proclivities you may or may not have noticed that your feed is awash with images from the JWST. Certainly science Twitter is very excited about it. And so they should be, it’s amazing to see what we can observe of the very big and very far away than ... Show More

Large language models are changing the way physics is taught and practised