In 2021 the Arctic let go of a freshwater lid that could have stopped water sinking in the North Atlantic. An oceanologist explains why we barely noticed.
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Carbon monoxide gives one bright line. A 15-atom molecule gives a comb of faint ones that overlap with dozens of others. Why space's biggest molecules hide.
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Organic matter on Mars sounds like a life story. An astronomer explains why "organic" only means carbon, and why the split from "inorganic" is a historical leftover.
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Fungi that grew in Chernobyl may feed on radiation. A mycologist explains why the same trait makes them a threat on a space station and an ally on Mars.
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Mycologist Mikhail Vishnevsky on why mycelia never merge: three sibling spores in a dish end up at war, and a fungus waters its birches only for itself.
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Credit and job decisions now come from algorithms with the weight of a court ruling. Sergey Markov on why you can't see the evidence or appeal.
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Physics caps how fast any computer can run. An AI expert argues the machine at that cap would look like a black hole, and that this could explain the silent sky.
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A human genome cut into ten-letter words runs to 300 million tokens. How a language-model trick lets AI read DNA, and why drug doses and gene therapy are the targets.
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A language model sees only words, yet to guess the next one it may have to rebuild the world behind them. An AI researcher on why that dumb task asks so much.
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