Latest posts
-
A Public Atlas Predicting Every Possible Single-Letter DNA Change
A new atlas publishes predicted molecular effects for all nine billion possible single-letter changes in the human genome, turning a question that used to need a lab into a lookup.
-
Using Supernovae to Hunt for Particles Nobody Has Seen
A physics team has proposed using the gas a dying star throws off before it explodes as a detector for extremely weakly interacting particles, and set new limits using a recent supernova.
-
Why Data Centres Are Turning to Nuclear Power
Commitments to build AI computing capacity are now arriving with power agreements attached, including nuclear deals running for decades. The constraint has stopped being chips.
-
How Recommendation Systems Decide What You See
Recommenders mostly do not analyse the item. They find people who liked what you liked, then show you what those people liked next, and that produces both the accuracy and the tunnel vision.
-
How Encryption Protects Your Data
Encryption turns data into something unreadable without a key. Modern systems use two different kinds at once, because each solves a problem the other cannot.
-
How Search Engines Rank Results
A search engine cannot search the live web. It searches a copy it built earlier, and ranking is a separate problem done with hundreds of signals rather than one formula.
-
Why AI Uses So Much Electricity
Training runs are measured in months of full-power computing, and answering a question costs far more than a search. The reason is arithmetic done on a very large scale, plus the cooling to remove the heat.
-
Astronomers Find the Lightest Double Neutron Star Yet
A radio survey has turned up a pair of neutron stars orbiting every 2.36 hours, with a combined mass lower than any binary of its kind found before. It is an unusually good test of general relativity.
-
The Largest Catalogue of Hydrogen Galaxies Yet Released
A new data release catalogues 156,000 galaxies by their cold hydrogen, roughly five times the previous record, and measures the local universe’s hydrogen density to 0.6 percent.
-
Astronomers Watch a Massive Binary Star Being Assembled
Eight years of radio observations have captured a pair of massive young stars mid-formation, on a lopsided orbit with discs pointing in different directions. That rules out the simplest explanation.