
What about AI? If artificial intelligence takes over, some argue, there’s little point in studying physics or any science. AI could be doing half your job before you even get your degree. But that argument ignores why people study science in the first place. It’s to figure out new things, to…

New research from the University of Cambridge suggests that autism should not be understood as a homogeneous condition with a single cause. Scientists found that people diagnosed in early childhood often have a different genetic profile than those diagnosed later in life, broadening the…

Parkinson’s is the fastest-growing neurological condition in the US, with 90,000 people now diagnosed every year alone – a 50 per cent jump since the mid-1980s. The picture is similar worldwide: a staggering 25 million people are expected to be diagnosed by 2050, more than double today’s…

Parkinson’s is the fastest-growing neurological condition in the US, with 90,000 people now diagnosed every year alone – a 50 per cent jump since the mid-1980s. The picture is similar worldwide: a staggering 25 million people are expected to be diagnosed by 2050, more than double today’s…
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.
Since their discovery in 1982, exotic materials known as quasicrystals have bedeviled physicists and chemists. Their atoms arrange themselves into chains of pentagons, decagons, and other shapes to form patterns that never quite…