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There really is a significant mystery in the world of cosmology. This, in my opinion, is a good thing. Such mysteries point in the direction of new physics, or at least a new understanding of the universe. Resolving this mystery – called the Hubble Tension – is a major goal of cosmology. This is a […] The post The Hubble Tension Hubbub first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.
My recent article on social media has fostered good social media engagement, so I thought I would follow up with a discussion of the most urgent question regarding social media – should the US ban TikTok? The Biden administration signs into law legislation that would ban the social media app TikTok on January 19th (deliberately […] The post Should the US Ban TikTok? first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.
One of the things I have come to understand from following technology news for decades is that perhaps the most important breakthroughs, and often the least appreciated, are those in material science. We can get better at engineering and making stuff out of the materials we have, but new materials with superior properties change the […] The post New Material for Nanoconductors first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.
Recently Meta decided to end their fact-checkers on Facebook and Instagram. The move has been both hailed and criticized. They are replacing the fact-checkers with an X-style “community notes”. Mark Zuckerberg summed up the move this way: “It means we’re going to catch less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s […] The post What Kind of Social Media Do We Want? first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.
How close are we to having fusion reactors actually sending electric power to the grid? This is a huge and complicated question, and one with massive implications for our civilization. I think we are still at the point where we cannot count on fusion reactors coming online anytime soon, but progress has been steady and […] The post Plan To Build First Commercial Fusion Reactor first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.
More in science
While I've been absolutely buried under deadlines, it's been a crazy week for US science, and things are unlikely to calm down anytime soon. As I've written before, I largely try to keep my political views off here, since that's not what people want to read from me, and I want to keep the focus on the amazing physics of materials and nanoscale systems. (Come on, this is just cool - using light to dynamically change the chirality of crystals? That's really nifty.) Still, it's hard to be silent, even just limiting the discussion to science-related issues. Changes of presidential administrations always carry a certain amount of perturbation, as the heads of many federal agencies are executive branch appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president. That said, the past week was exceptional for multiple reasons, including pulling the US out of the WHO as everyone frets about H5N1 bird flu; a highly disruptive freeze of activity within HHS (lots of negative consequences even if it wraps up quickly); and immediate purging of various agency websites of any programs or language related to DEI, with threatened punishment for employees who don't report their colleagues for insufficient reporting of any continued DEI-related activities. Treating other people with respect, trying to make science (and engineering) welcoming to all, and trying to engage and educate the widest possible population in expanding human knowledge should not be controversial positions. Saying that we should try to broaden the technical workforce, or that medical trials should involve women and multiple races should not be controversial positions. What I wrote eight years ago is still true. It is easier to break things than to build things. Rash steps very often have lingering unintended consequences. Panic is not helpful. Doomscrolling is not helpful. Getting through challenging times requires determination, focus, and commitment to not losing one's principles. Ok, enough out of me. Next week (deadlines permitting) I'll be back with some science, because that's what I do.
The library sorting problem is used across computer science for organizing far more than just books. A new solution is less than a page-width away from the theoretical ideal. The post New Book-Sorting Algorithm Almost Reaches Perfection first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Final article in the series
The Drumbeat of Releases Continues… Notebook Assistant Chat inside Any Notebook Bring Us Your Gigabytes! Introducing Tabular Manipulating Data in Tabular Getting Data into Tabular Cleaning Data for Tabular The Structure of Tabular Tabular Everywhere Algebra with Symbolic Arrays Language Tune-Ups Brightening Our Colors; Spiffing Up for 2025 LLM Streamlining & Streaming Streamlining Parallel Computation: […]
In the late 19th century, Karl Weierstrass invented a fractal-like function that was decried as nothing less than a “deplorable evil.” In time, it would transform the foundations of mathematics. The post The Jagged, Monstrous Function That Broke Calculus first appeared on Quanta Magazine
