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Category: mathematics – Page 3

3 Questions: On the future of AI and the mathematical and physical sciences

Curiosity-driven research has long sparked technological transformations. A century ago, curiosity about atoms led to quantum mechanics, and eventually the transistor at the heart of modern computing. Conversely, the steam engine was a practical breakthrough, but it took fundamental research in thermodynamics to fully harness its power.

Today, artificial intelligence and science find themselves at a similar inflection point. The current AI revolution has been fueled by decades of research in the mathematical and physical sciences (MPS), which provided the challenging problems, datasets, and insights that made modern AI possible. The 2024 Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry, recognizing foundational AI methods rooted in physics and AI applications for protein design, made this connection impossible to miss.

In 2025, MIT hosted a Workshop on the Future of AI+MPS, funded by the National Science Foundation with support from the MIT School of Science and the MIT departments of Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics. The workshop brought together leading AI and science researchers to chart how the MPS domains can best capitalize on — and contribute to — the future of AI. Now a white paper, with recommendations for funding agencies, institutions, and researchers, has been published in Machine Learning: Science and Technology. In this interview, Jesse Thaler, MIT professor of physics and chair of the workshop, describes key themes and how MIT is positioning itself to lead in AI and science.

Fundamental constraints to the logic of living systems

Excellent review in which Solé et al. explore how physical/mathematical constraints may determine what subset of biological systems could theoretically evolve in the universe. Lots of fascinating ideas applying concepts like Turing machines, cellular automata, McCulloch-Pitts networks, energy minimization, and phase transitions to multiscale biological and evolutionary phenomena!

I found the description of how parasites almost inevitably emerge and drive increased biodiversity in computational models of evolution particularly fascinating. Interestingly, I recall this idea was featured in the Hyperion Cantos novels during an explanation of the history of artificial intelligence in their fictional universe!

Abstract. It has been argued that the historical nature of evolution makes it a highly path-dependent process. Under this view, the outcome of evolutionary dynamics could have resulted in organisms with different forms and functions. At the same time, there is ample evidence that convergence and constraints strongly limit the domain of the potential design principles that evolution can achieve. Are these limitations relevant in shaping the fabric of the possible? Here, we argue that fundamental constraints are associated with the logic of living matter. We illustrate this idea by considering the thermodynamic properties of living systems, the linear nature of molecular information, the cellular nature of the building blocks of life, multicellularity and development, the threshold nature of computations in cognitive systems and the discrete nature of the architecture of ecosystems. In all these examples, we present available evidence and suggest potential avenues towards a well-defined theoretical formulation.

World’s most advanced supercomputers decode nuclear reactor turbulence

At Argonne National Laboratory, researchers are trading in old-school approximations for raw supercomputing power, proving that the secret to a safer carbon-free future lies in mastering the math of chaos.

Researchers are advancing nuclear safety by using high-performance computing to model turbulent flow — the chaotic movement of fluids and gases that governs heat transfer and gas mixing within a reactor.

DNA origami vaccine rivals mRNA shots while being easier to store and manufacture

The COVID-19 pandemic brought messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines to the forefront of global health care. After their clinical trial stages, the first COVID-19 mRNA vaccine was administered on 8 December 2020 and mathematical models suggest that mRNA vaccines prevented at least 14.4 million deaths from COVID-19 in the first year alone.

Their extraordinary effectiveness in having softened the blow of the disease has led to the development of mRNA vaccines to also combat other infectious pathogens.

Clinical trials for influenza virus, Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), HIV, Zika, Epstein-Barr virus, and tuberculosis bacteria are all on the way. Importantly, however, COVID-19 research has revealed shortcomings of mRNA vaccines that highlight the need for different approaches.

Engineers Create Unusual Magnetic Material That Behaves Like Graphene

Researchers at the University of Illinois have discovered a surprising mathematical connection between two areas of condensed-matter physics that were long considered separate. The electronic and magnetic behavior of two-dimensional materials both hold significant promise for future technologies.

The Simulation Argument Was Never Actually Debunked — And The Math Is Getting Worse

In 2017, headlines around the world declared the simulation hypothesis dead. Physicists had debunked it, the articles said. We could all move on. There was one problem. The paper they cited never mentioned the simulation hypothesis. The debunking was invented by journalists who never read the research. And in the years since, the actual physics has gotten significantly worse.

This documentary follows that physics all the way down.

We begin with what really happened in 2017 — the Ringel-Kovrizhin paper, what it actually proved, and Scott Aaronson’s correction that nobody shared. Then we examine Nick Bostrom’s original 2003 trilemma, the real math behind it, and why two decades of attacks from Sean Carroll, Lisa Randall, and Sabine Hossenfelder have failed to break it. Every critique concedes something. Every attempted kill shot narrows the escape routes.

From there, we trace the physics of information through three remarkable lives. Konrad Zuse, who built the first programmable computer in his parents’ living room during the bombing of Berlin, then proposed in 1967 that the universe itself is a computation — and was ignored. John Archibald Wheeler, who lost his brother in World War Two and spent the rest of his life asking whether reality is built from information, condensing it into three words that changed physics: \.

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