A healthy brain maintains a harmony of neurons that excite or inhibit other neurons, but the lines between different types of ...

Naomi Saphra thinks that most research into language models focuses too much on the finished product. She’s mining the ...

Two mathematicians have proved that a straightforward question — how hard is it to untie a knot? — has a complicated answer.

Climate science is the most significant scientific collaboration in history. This series from Quanta Magazine guides you through basic climate science — from quantum effects to ancient hothouses, from ...

In the 1960s, the Soviet climatologist and mathematician Mikhail Budyko set out to investigate the potential future of a planet on the brink of nuclear Armageddon. He started by looking some 600 ...

Earth’s radiation can send some molecules spinning or vibrating, which is what makes them greenhouse gases. This infographic explains how relatively few heat-trapping molecules can have a planetary ...

AI may sound like a human, but that doesn’t mean that AI learns like a human. In this episode, Ellie Pavlick explains why understanding how LLMs can process language could unlock deeper insights into ...

Naomi Saphra thinks that most research into language models focuses too much on the finished product. She’s mining the history of their training for insights into why these systems work the way they ...

t started as a fantasy, then a promise — inspired by biology and animated by the ideas of physicists — and grew to become a powerful research tool. Now artificial intelligence has evolved into ...

The noted mathematician and author Steven Strogatz explains how the conversations with experts in his new Quanta Magazine podcast address his lifelong fascination with timeless mysteries. Two recent ...

Around 2,500 years ago, Babylonian traders in Mesopotamia impressed two slanted wedges into clay tablets. The shapes represented a placeholder digit, squeezed between others, to distinguish numbers ...