Trying to understand how a neural network learns is like being a stranger in a strange land: The machines just don’t process data like people. But new research on simple networks that deeply understand their tasks may make it easier to get to know them. quantamagazine.org/how-do-machine…

The cognitive neuroscientist Suzanne Dikker studies the cognitive, creative and social benefits of interbrain synchrony, including improved learning and group problem-solving. quantamagazine.org/the-social-ben…

Listen in as Lenny Susskind describes the black hole wars and how he battled Stephen Hawking to make the world safe for Quantum Mechanics on The Joy of Why | Quanta Magazine ⁦Quanta Magazine⁩ ⁦PRX⁩ ⁦Steven Strogatz⁩ quantamagazine.org/can-informatio…

In the 1980s, Avi Wigderson helped show that for any provable statement, it’s possible to convince someone of that proof — without revealing any details. Today, that result is central to cryptography and helped Wigderson earn the 77th A.M. Turing Award. quantamagazine.org/avi-wigderson-…

An emerging field of biology known as sociovirology is uncovering a marvelously complex social world that suggests viruses make sense only as members of a community. quantamagazine.org/viruses-finall…

“In viruses, conflict is dominant.” —sociovirologist Asher Leeks (Asher Leeks) trib.al/6HHzIjs

In the 1990s, Stephen Hawking bet Leonard Susskind that information can't escape a black hole. In 2013, a discovery proved Hawking wrong. Hear Susskind explain the black hole war to co-host Janna Levin on the latest episode of “The Joy of Why” podcast. listen.quantamagazine.org/jow-306-s…

Viruses aren’t just free-floating saboteurs. A burgeoning field has uncovered complex viral social behaviors including cheating, cooperation and other collective choreography. Carl Zimmer reports: quantamagazine.org/viruses-finall…

Some brain cells fire both when a mouse behaves aggressively and when it watches others fight — a new finding that sounds intriguingly like the mirror neurons scientists had hyped and then abandoned nearly a decade earlier. quantamagazine.org/overexposure-d…

Peter Higgs, the physicist who helped illuminate the fundamental process that bestows mass on elementary particles, has died at the age of 94.

His namesake Higgs boson has left physicists with another mystery, one so seemingly intractable that it calls into question the…

The Mutual Wave Machine, which toured cities around the world from 2013 to 2019, let passersby explore interbrain synchrony in pairs while generating data for neuroscience research. The brighter the shell they sat in, the more their brains were in sync. quantamagazine.org/the-social-ben…

The culture of simplicity that Paul Erdős promoted has borne plenty of fruit in combinatorial geometry, but some mathematicians say it also led to blind spots in stubborn problems. quantamagazine.org/merging-fields…

For Avi Wigderson, who was today named the 77th A.M. Turing Award Winner, it’s always a good time to study computational complexity. “The field is just blossoming, and beautifully.” quantamagazine.org/avi-wigderson-…

Avi Wigderson was named the winner of the A.M. Turing Award for his foundational contributions to the theory of computation. trib.al/MvmRCPl

Counting the number of distances between points might sound like an esoteric exercise. But in the decades-long quest to do it, mathematicians have developed tools that have proved useful in fields from number theory to physics. Leila Sloman reports: trib.al/oSaeCHG