Cubic millimetre of brain mapped in spectacular detail.
The universe’s topology may not be simple. Most models for the overall shape and geometry of the Universe—including some exotic ones—are compatible with the latest cosmic observations.
‘Shut up and calculate’: how Einstein lost the battle to explain quantum reality. By suppressing questions they considered too ‘philosophical’, post-war physicists created an unquestioning orthodoxy that influences science to this day.
How does ChatGPT ‘think’? Psychology and neuroscience crack open AI large language models.
Intrinsic simplicity of complex systems.
Collective intelligence: A unifying concept for integrating biology across scales and substrates.
Popular songs are simpler and more repetitive than they used to be. This is why I listen less and less to popular music. For years I kept up with the latest releases, but at some point I lost interest, because so much sounds the same.
Mathematicians have illuminated what sets of points can look like if the distances between them are all whole numbers.
Survival of the nicest: have we got evolution the wrong way round? How humans, animals and even single-celled organisms cooperate to survive suggests there’s more to life than just competition, argues a cheering study of evolutionary biology.
Assessing the health burden from air pollution. A broader approach to assessing the burden of disease from air pollution is required.
Everyone’s a sellout now. So you want to be an artist. Do you have to start a TikTok?
Review of Fire Weather by John Vaillant and The Heat Will Kill You First by Jeff Goodell.
Profile of the philosopher Byung-Chul Han, who in treatises such as “The Burnout Society” and “The Crisis of Narration,” diagnoses the frenetic aimlessness of the digital age.
The researcher who explores computation by conjuring new worlds.
Augustine Birrell. Short story by Virginia Woolf.