Computers & Math News

July 28, 2026

Top Headlines

Scientists Create an “Electron Lighthouse” with Laser Light

July 28, 2026 Scientists have created an “electron lighthouse” that uses laser light to launch and steer electrons through a semiconductor without an applied electrical field. The quantum effect could eventually improve optical sensors, communications, ...

Your AI Calorie-tracking App May Be Off by 345 Calories

July 26, 2026 Popular AI-powered food apps may make calorie counting easier, but they may also leave out a surprisingly large part of the meal. Four apps underestimated calories and fat by about one-third when tested against carefully prepared meals. High-fat ...

Inside the Backrooms: The Internet’s Creepiest Place Is Becoming a Tourist Attraction

July 26, 2026 The Backrooms began as a single eerie image of empty yellow rooms, but internet users transformed it into a vast fictional world that feels disturbingly real. Through videos, games, maps, survival ...

Sweden’s Hidden Rare Earth Deposits Could Help Break China’s Grip

July 24, 2026 Sweden could become an important source of rare earth elements needed for magnets and green technologies. Instead of extracting one target metal, researchers are cataloging everything contained in Swedish mineral deposits. They will then develop ...

MIT’s New Lidar Chip Could Give Self-driving Cars a Wider View

July 22, 2026 MIT engineers have found a way to give chip-based lidar a wider, clearer view without relying on moving parts. Their design uses differently shaped antennas that can sit close together without scrambling one another’s signals. In tests, the system ...

New Cancer Strategy Could Stop Tumors Before Resistance Takes Hold

July 22, 2026 Researchers are applying evolutionary theory to cancer by changing treatments before tumors have time to develop resistance. Mathematical models suggest that rapid, carefully timed switches between multiple therapies could improve cure ...

New Programmable Photonic Chip Can Control How Fast Light Moves

July 21, 2026 Scientists have created a programmable optical chip that can slow light on demand, giving engineers far greater control over how optical signals propagate through a circuit. The technology could provide the delays, synchronization, and buffering ...

An Ordinary Laptop Solved a Problem Thought to Require a Quantum Computer

July 20, 2026 A quantum problem once described as impossible for classical computers has now been solved using relatively modest hardware. Researchers used tensor networks to compress the overwhelming wave function created by hundreds of entangled qubits, ...

New AI Blood Test Predicts Heart Disease 15 Years Early

July 19, 2026 A new AI-powered blood test could give people a remarkably early warning of serious heart and circulation problems. Developed by researchers at the University of Hong Kong, CardiOmicScore analyzes thousands of proteins and metabolites to estimate ...

“Silly Sprinklers” Help Scientists Finally Solve Feynman’s Famous Sprinkler Mystery

July 17, 2026 A team of mathematicians used whimsical "silly sprinklers" to solve a physics mystery that has puzzled scientists for decades. Their experiments showed that the rotation of both normal and reverse ...

Quantum Breakthrough Links Light and Magnetism in Atomically Thin Materials

July 16, 2026 A new review highlights exciting progress in atomically thin quantum materials where light and magnetism work together in ways never before possible. In these materials, light-generated excitons can interact directly with magnetic behavior, creating ...

Alan Turing's Biggest AI Assumption May Have Been Wrong

July 13, 2026 A new book claims AI has been built on a flawed assumption dating back to Alan Turing's famous 1950 paper. Peter J. Denning argues that the most important parts of human intelligence, including common sense, intuition, culture, and practical ...

Latest Headlines

updated 9:59am EDT

A 200-Year-Old Physics Experiment Could Help Build Future Computers

July 13, 2026 Scientists at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have discovered a surprisingly simple way to create exotic light structures called optical skyrmions using a 200-year-old optical effect ...

Scientists Discovered the Brain Doesn't Make Decisions the Way We Thought

July 13, 2026 A new study suggests the brain begins making decisions much earlier than scientists previously thought. Researchers found that even primary sensory regions are influenced by higher brain areas ...

Physicists Say Quantum Mechanics May Not Need Imaginary Numbers After All

July 13, 2026 Physicists from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) have examined a fundamental property of quantum mechanics in collaboration with the German Aerospace Center (DLR). In the scientific ...

Physicists Finally Build a Quantum Material Predicted More Than a Decade Ago

July 11, 2026 Researchers have achieved a major milestone by creating a long-sought two-dimensional quantum material and confirming its unusual conducting edge ...

Tiny Bubbles Could Revolutionize Inkjet Printing

July 11, 2026 Ultra-fine bubbles may offer a cleaner way to perfect inkjet printing for next-generation electronics. By simply changing the number of bubbles in each droplet, researchers were able to dramatically ...

Harvard Scientists Turn a Silicon Chip Into a DNA Writing Machine

July 8, 2026 Scientists have created a silicon chip that can write dozens of DNA sequences simultaneously using electricity and water-based enzymes, offering a cleaner alternative to conventional DNA ...

Scientists Used AI to Crack One of Water's Biggest Mysteries

July 8, 2026 Water’s odd behavior becomes even more dramatic when it is supercooled, but scientists have struggled to compare the many different ways of describing its microscopic structure. Researchers at the ...

New AI Model Reveals How Neutron Star Mergers Forge Heavy Elements

July 8, 2026 Researchers have created an AI-based simulation that makes it much faster to model how neutron star mergers produce many of the universe's heaviest elements. The new tool could improve predictions of ...

Incredible New Material Makes Heat Programmable

July 7, 2026 A newly developed material can control and "program" heat, allowing it to direct thermal radiation, switch modes, and remember its settings without continuous power. The innovation could lead to ...

AI Just Supercharged the Race to Find Room Temperature Superconductors

July 7, 2026 Scientists have combined machine learning with quantum physics to discover two new superconductors and create a much faster way to search for many more. The technique could bring researchers ...

This Simple Twist Could Bring Quantum Computers Closer to Reality

June 20, 2026 Researchers found that twisting layered sheets of hexagonal boron nitride can dramatically change the light produced by quantum emitters embedded within the material. The technique offers an ...

The Milky Way’s Weird Gamma-Ray Glow May Be Dark Matter After All

June 30, 2026 A strange gamma-ray glow at the center of the Milky Way has long sparked debate over whether it comes from hidden neutron stars or elusive dark matter. By applying machine learning to more than a ...

Researchers Found a Wordle Strategy That Wins 99% of the Time

June 19, 2026 Researchers developed a Wordle-solving strategy that succeeds 99% of the time by focusing on information gain rather than likely answers. The method uses Shannon entropy to identify guesses that ...

SpaceX Wants to Build AI Data Centers in Space. Will It Work?

June 18, 2026 The race to build data centers in space is gaining momentum as AI drives unprecedented demand for computing power. Orbital facilities could tap into abundant solar energy and avoid many of the ...

New Plasma Trick Could Unlock Smaller, More Powerful Computer Chips

June 17, 2026 A new technique could solve one of the biggest challenges in making future computer chips from ultrathin materials. Researchers found that coating molybdenum disulfide with oxygen or fluorine lets ...

Brain-Inspired Chip Runs Near Absolute Zero and Could Transform Quantum Computing

June 12, 2026 Scientists at the University of Hong Kong have created a remarkable new type of brain-inspired chip that can function just above absolute zero, one of the coldest environments imaginable. By using a ...

AI Could Uncover New Physics Faster but There’s a Surprising Catch

June 11, 2026 Scientists found that transfer learning can make the search for new physics in the universe much faster, slashing the need for expensive simulations. Yet the approach can backfire when AI relies too ...

Oxford Physicists Just Made Schrödinger’s Cat Even Stranger

June 15, 2026 Oxford physicists have created an entirely new type of Schrödinger’s cat-like quantum state using components that are themselves highly quantum in nature. The advance could open new possibilities ...

AI-Designed Universal Coronavirus Vaccine Passes First Human Trial

June 5, 2026 Scientists have successfully tested an AI-designed universal coronavirus vaccine in humans for the first time, finding it to be safe and well tolerated. The vaccine generated immune responses against ...

A Classic Brain Test Exposed AI's Biggest Weakness

June 10, 2026 Researchers gave top AI models a classic attention test used in psychology and found a major flaw. While the models could correctly name colors in short lists, their performance deteriorated sharply ...

NASA Just Proved Spacecraft Can Switch Between Multiple Satellite Networks

June 6, 2026 NASA’s PExT terminal has shown that spacecraft can seamlessly communicate through multiple government and commercial networks, a major step beyond traditional single-network systems. The mission is ...

This Strange Crystal Acts Like Metal and Glass at the Same Time

June 1, 2026 A remarkable crystal called molybdenum oxychloride could help make futuristic technologies like smart contact lenses and ultrathin AR glasses a reality. Scientists have created the first detailed ...

New 3D Silicon Chip Breakthrough Could Extend Moore’s Law for Years

May 30, 2026 As traditional chip miniaturization slows, researchers have found a way to pack more computing power into the same space by stacking silicon circuits in multiple layers. The new process uses ...

This Strange New Phase of Matter Could Transform Quantum Technology

May 30, 2026 By stacking custom-designed silver nanoparticles like nanoscale LEGO bricks, scientists stabilized a mysterious crystal phase that had never been observed before. The material not only solves a ...

Heat Breaks the Rules at the Nanoscale and Scientists Used It to Their Advantage

June 8, 2026 Scientists used nanoscale gold metamaterials to supercharge heat transfer across tiny gaps, achieving up to four times more energy flow than similar conventional systems. The breakthrough could lead ...

Your Brain Was Never Designed for This Much Bad News

June 16, 2026 Humans evolved to pay close attention to danger, but today that instinct is being overwhelmed by an endless supply of bad news from around the world. Researchers say the answer isn’t to stop ...

New Light-Powered Chip Could Accelerate AI and Quantum Computing

June 2, 2026 Scientists have created a tiny chip that can generate, steer, and read light-based information all in one device, marking a major leap toward ultra-fast, energy-efficient computing. The breakthrough ...

Scientists Create Global Treasure Map Pointing to Hidden Rare Earth Deposits

May 26, 2026 Scientists have created a global “treasure map” for rare earth elements by uncovering where the strange volcanic rocks that contain them are most likely to form. By combining thousands of rock ...

AI Won’t Replace You but Someone Using AI Might

May 25, 2026 Generative AI is transforming the workplace faster than ever, but new research from the University of Vaasa suggests the biggest threat may not be AI itself — it’s falling behind in learning how ...

New AI Body Map Reveals Obesity’s Hidden Attack on Facial Nerves

May 23, 2026 Scientists have created an AI-powered system that can scan and map an entire mouse body in extraordinary detail — and it just uncovered a surprising new effect of obesity. Beyond disrupting ...