Category: Being

  • Finding your way…

    A team at Facebook AI has created a reinforcement learning algorithm that lets a robot find its way in an unfamiliar environment without using a map. (1) Finding your way without a map. Is there any other way? With a map, you will always return at home. But what is home? Were you not born…

  • Being afraid of Nothing…

    Being afraid of Nothing…

    Scientists have created the fastest spinning object ever made, taking them a big step closer to being able to measure the mysterious quantum forces at play inside ‘nothingness’. The record-breaking object will pave the way for scientists to detect unfathomably small amounts of drag caused by the ‘friction’ within a vacuum. The science of nothingness…

  • Tractionless movement.

    Tractionless movement.

    Understanding how cells move autonomously is a fundamental question for both biologists and physicists. Experiments on cell motility are commonly done by looking at the motion of a cell on a glass slide under a microscope.  In those conditions, cells are observed to “crawl” on the surface. Crawling is well understood: cells attach themselves to…

  • Not seeing the tree… 

    Not seeing the tree… 

    Researchers have shown how it is possible that objects stand out less when they are surrounded by similar objects. This surroundings-suppressing effect is caused by feedback from higher visual brain areas. The results of this research are important for a better understanding of the way in which the brain transforms incoming light into a cohesive…

  • Back in time…

    Back in time…

    Time, as far as we know, moves only in one direction. But in 2018, researchers found events in some gamma-ray burst pulses that seemed to repeat themselves as though they were going backwards in time. Recent research suggests a potential answer for what might be causing this time reversibility effect. If waves within the relativistic…

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