A new suggestion that complexity increases over time, not just in living organisms but in the nonliving world, promises to rewrite notions of time and evolution. In 1950 the Italian physicist Enrico ...

One July afternoon in 2024, Ryan Williams set out to prove himself wrong. Two months had passed since he’d hit upon a startling discovery about the relationship between time and memory in computing.

Google announced a new multi-vector retrieval algorithm called MUVERA that speeds up retrieval and ranking, and improves accuracy. The algorithm can be used for search, recommender systems (like ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. One July afternoon in 2024, Ryan Williams set out to prove himself wrong. Two months had passed since he’d hit upon a startling ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1950 the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi was discussing the possibility of intelligent alien life with his colleagues. If alien ...