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    AI should be seen as an ally to human mathematicians, not a threat

    AI is becoming smarter all the time, but mathematicians needn’t fear they will be replaced by machine intelligence, argues Junaid Mubeen

    Humans

    | Comment

    8 June 2022

    By Junaid Mubeen
    Michelle D’urbano
    WHEN 18-time international Go champion Lee Sedol retired from the game in 2019, mathematicians everywhere will have shared a moment of quiet introspection. Three years earlier, Lee had been beaten 4-1 by an artificial intelligence, DeepMind’s AlphaGo. Having observed the machine’s rapid pace of progress since then, Lee concluded that AI is an “entity that cannot be defeated” – at least by human Go players – a verdict that prompted his retirement.
    AI’s triumph in a game as complex as Go might signal that mathematics, a subject that it has had in its cross hairs from its beginnings, is also ripe for automation. As … More

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    How science can help you bake a loaf of bread that stays softer longer

    By Sam Wong
    StockFood / Parissi, Lucy
    STALE bread may seem like it has simply dried out, but staling is actually a complex process that still isn’t fully understood.
    In the 19th century, the French chemist Jean-Baptiste Boussingault noted that stale bread can be refreshed by putting it in the oven, and showed that bread will still go stale if it is hermetically sealed and doesn’t lose any moisture.
    In fact, staling is to do with the chemistry of starch, which is found in flour and consists of two kinds of sugar molecules, amylose and amylopectin. Raw starch has a rigid, crystalline structure, but it … More

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    Last chance to buy a pickled cockroach full of moon dust

    Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more

    Humans

    8 June 2022

    Dinner by moonlight
    Around a tenth of the 21.5 kilograms of moon rock the Apollo 11 astronauts brought back to Earth on 24 July 1969 ended up as food. In Building 37, at what is now known as NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, it was ground up and fed to various microbes, insects and aquatic animals. Would they sicken or die? Would they acquire strange powers?
    Eight cockroaches were among the diners, and Feedback is now digging through the penny jar in a frantic attempt to raise enough to bid for the traces of their meal. Three of … More

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    Top Gun: Maverick review: Thrilling nostalgia with superfast planes

    A high octane mix of war, techno thrills and sports movie, Top Gun: Maverick devotes itself to nostalgia in a well-told tale of misunderstanding and redemption – and superfast planes

    Humans

    8 June 2022

    By Simon Ings

    Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise), steely eyed in an F/A-18 combat jetParamount Pictures
    Top Gun: Maverick
    Joseph Kosinski
    Out now

    NEAR the climax of Joseph Kosinski’s delirious sequel to 1986 hit Top Gun, a state-of-the-art, fifth-generation fighter plane engages Pete “Maverick” Mitchell’s aircraft in a dogfight around snow-capped mountains. Suddenly, the huge, hulking wonderplane banks, stalls and turns, hanging over Mav (Tom Cruise, even more steely eyed than usual) and his wingman Rooster (Miles Teller) as though it is painted on the sky.
    “What the fuck was that?” Rooster cries, although an actual graduate of TOPGUN (official name, … More

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    The Rise and Reign of the Mammals review: how mammals found their way

    The story of the emergence of mammals is told with elan in a clear, engaging book – with a nasty sting in the tale for us humans

    Humans

    8 June 2022

    By Michael Marshall

    A sail-backed Dimetrodon looked like a primitive dinosaur, but was a reptile-like precursor to mammalsDaniel Eskridge / Alamy Stock Photo
    The Rise and Reign of the Mammals
    Steve Brusatte
    Picador

    ANYONE writing about mammals faces a key challenge: not making it about us. Humans are mammals of course, and it is easy to present the tale of mammalian evolution as inexorably leading to our arrival. Palaeontologist Steve Brusatte deftly avoids this problem in his new history of mammals by leaving almost all mention of humans to the final pages, where we come in as, essentially, … More

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    New test shows which bits of your DNA are from which biological parent

    A test uses epigenetic marks on your DNA to determine which parts of your genome came from each biological parent

    Humans

    8 June 2022

    By Carissa Wong
    It is now possible to work out which parts of someone’s genome came from which biological parent via a genetic testJozef Polc / Alamy
    A genetic technique can identify which parts of your genome came from your biological mother and which parts are from your biological father. The method could be useful in cases where an individual is carrying a disease-associated gene variant by helping to establish which other family members should consider undergoing screening for the gene.
    “It’s a very, very cool study,” says Shai Carmi at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, … More

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    A newfound, oddly slow pulsar shouldn’t emit radio waves — yet it does

    Astronomers have added a new species to the neutron star zoo, showcasing the wide diversity among the compact magnetic remains of dead, once-massive stars.

    The newfound highly magnetic pulsar has a surprisingly long rotation period, which is challenging the theoretical understanding of these objects, researchers report May 30 in Nature Astronomy. Dubbed PSR J0901-4046, this pulsar sweeps its lighthouse-like radio beam past Earth about every 76 seconds — three times slower than the previous record holder.

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    While it’s an oddball, some of this newfound pulsar’s characteristics are common among its relatives. That means this object may help astronomers better connect the evolutionary phases among mysterious species in the neutron star menagerie.

    Astronomers know of many types of neutron stars. Each one is the compact object left over after a massive star’s explosive death, but their characteristics can vary. A pulsar is a neutron star that astronomers detect at a regular interval thanks to its cosmic alignment: The star’s strong magnetic field produces beams of radio waves emanating from near the star’s poles, and every time one of those beams sweeps across Earth, astronomers can see a radio pulse.

    The newfound, slowpoke pulsar sits in our galaxy, roughly 1,300 light-years away. Astrophysicist Manisha Caleb of the University of Sydney in Australia and her colleagues found it in data from the MeerKAT radio telescope outside Carnarvon, South Africa.

    Further observations with MeerKAT revealed not only the pulsar’s slow, steady radio beat — a measure of how fast it spins — but also another important detail: The rate at which the spin slows as the pulsar ages. And those two bits of info revealed something odd about this pulsar. According to theory, it should not be emitting radio waves. And yet, it is.

    As neutron stars age, they lose energy and spin more slowly. According to calculations, “at some point, they’ve exhausted all their energy, and they cease to emit any sort of emission,” Caleb says. They’ve become dead to detectors.

    A pulsar’s rotation period and the slowdown of its spin relates to the strength of its magnetic field, which accelerates subatomic particles streaming from the star and, in turn, generates radio waves. Any neutron stars spinning as slowly as PSR J0901-4046 are in this stellar “graveyard” and shouldn’t produce radio signals.

    But “we just keep finding weirder and weirder pulsars that chip away at that understanding,” says astrophysicist Maura McLaughlin of West Virginia University in Morgantown, who wasn’t involved with this work.

    The newfound pulsar could be its own unique species of neutron star. But in some ways, it also looks a bit familiar, Caleb says. She and her colleagues calculated the pulsar’s magnetic field from the rate its spin is slowing, and it’s incredibly strong, similar to magnetars (SN: 9/17/02). This hints that PSR J0901-4046 could be what’s known as a “quiescent magnetar,” which is a pulsar with very strong magnetic fields that occasionally emits brilliantly energetic bursts of X-rays or other radiation. “We’re going to need either X-ray emission or [ultraviolet] observations to confirm whether it is indeed a magnetar or a pulsar,” she says.

    The discovery team still has additional observations to analyze. “We do have a truckload more data on it,” says astrophysicist Ian Heywood of the University of Oxford. The researchers are looking at how the object’s brightness is changing over time and whether its spin abruptly changes, or “glitches.”

    The astronomers also are altering their automated computer programs, which scan the radio data and flag intriguing signals, to look for these longer-duration spin periods — or even weirder and more mysterious neutron star phenomena. “The sweet thing about astronomy, for me, is what’s out there waiting for us to find,” Heywood says. More

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    Doctor Who: Worlds of Wonder review: The science behind the show

    A mind-expanding new exhibition in Liverpool, UK, sets out to explore how science has influenced the making of Doctor Who

    Humans

    1 June 2022

    By Clare Wilson

    The science behind the Face of Boe is explored at Doctor Who: Worlds of wonderSarner International courtesy of National Museums Liverpool
    Doctor Who: Worlds of wonder
    World Museum, Liverpool, UK Until 30 October

    IF YOU know one thing about Doctor Who, it may be that the TARDIS, the titular Doctor’s spaceship, is based on a physical impossibility: it is “bigger on the inside”. Externally, it looks like a small, blue telephone box, but those who enter find themselves in a multi-dimensional labyrinth.
    While such a premise might seem fantastical, in fact, many of the ideas from the … More