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Knowledge Briefs
Dated notes on books, research, archives, software, and other developments worth interpreting.
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Saturn May Be Growing a Decagon at Its South Pole
The jet moves more than 46 times faster than the ten-sided wave embedded in it, and the wave itself still appears to be evolving.
What Is Memory For?
Remembering the past may be episodic memory’s most basic evolutionary function even if future and communicative functions came later.
A Planet's Atmosphere Can Be Confused With Its Star
JWST measures star and planet together. Around active cool stars, separating the two can become the hardest part of reading an atmosphere.
The More You Know, the More Questions You Can Have
Knowing a little can make better questions possible, and those questions can help build the knowledge that makes the next questions possible.
The 2,500-Year-Old Statue That Became a Paving Stone
A fifth-century BCE statue survived Roman Sardis because builders broke it up and laid it face down in a street.
Kusama's Infinity Rooms Did Not Begin With Mirrors
Before mirrors multiplied Kusama's rooms, she spent years painting and sewing repetition by hand.
At 10^81 Objects, the Imbalance Is Still About Three
A new discrepancy bound grows so slowly that even a problem at an absurd physical scale barely moves it.
An AI Tutor Can Match Retention and Still Lose on Transfer
Remembering a lesson and using it on a new problem are different achievements.
Can You Measure “Cognitive Fitness” Like Physical Fitness?
Three proposed KPIs make cognitive fitness concrete without yet making them validated measures of a generally fitter brain.
NASA Is Hanging a Fabric Radar Antenna Under a Mars Helicopter
SkyFall's radar has to see into the top few meters of Mars while its antenna survives being bent under the aircraft every time it lands.
Why Does Odysseus Cry When He Hears About His Own Victory?
In Odyssey 8, Homer answers the hero's tears with a simile that puts the conqueror in the place of the conquered.
The Most Important Thing in This 250-Year Time Capsule May Be the Instructions
Synthetic DNA may preserve the files until 2276. A decoder chip is there to help make sure somebody can still understand what the files are.
Juno Just Took Io’s Temperature Beneath the Surface
An instrument built to peer through Jupiter’s clouds has started measuring heat several meters down in Io’s crust.
What Makes an AI the Same AI Tomorrow?
A conversation can outlast the server process and even the model that began it. Memory is starting to shape what counts as continuity in AI systems.
AI Is Solving Erdős Problems. Counting Them Is the Wrong Ruler.
The raw count is a bad benchmark. Some of the underlying mathematical results are stronger evidence than the score suggests.
Good Notes May Work Because They Show You What You Don't Understand
A new experiment suggests that useful notes may improve learning partly by making overconfidence harder to maintain.
The First Herculaneum Scroll We Can Read Without Opening
A sealed Herculaneum papyrus has been virtually unwrapped and read end to end while remaining physically rolled shut.
Memory Without Provenance Is a Liability
AI agents are learning to remember. The harder problem is preserving where those memories came from, what surrounded them, and how they changed.
You Read Differently When You Expect to Remember It
An eye-tracking study found that reading for study changes what readers actually do with a text. The useful lesson is not simply to read more slowly.
The Odyssey Is a Bestseller Again. That Is Not a Bad Way to Meet Homer.
Christopher Nolan's film has sent thousands of readers back to Homer. Whatever one thinks of the adaptation, that is a reasonably good result.