Ben Brubaker

Staff Writer

Latest Articles

Computer Scientists Prove That Heat Destroys Quantum Entanglement

August 28, 2024

While devising a new quantum algorithm, four researchers accidentally established a hard limit on entanglement.

With Fifth Busy Beaver, Researchers Approach Computation’s Limits

July 2, 2024

After decades of uncertainty, a motley team of programmers has proved precisely how complicated simple computer programs can get.

Cryptographers Discover a New Foundation for Quantum Secrecy

June 3, 2024

Researchers have proved that secure quantum encryption is possible in a world without hard problems.

Cryptography Tricks Make a Hard Problem a Little Easier

April 18, 2024

Researchers have shown how to find the simplest description of a data set faster than by simply checking every possibility.

Q&A

The Researcher Who Explores Computation by Conjuring New Worlds

March 27, 2024

Russell Impagliazzo studies hard problems, the limits of cryptography, the nature of randomness and more.

How Chain-of-Thought Reasoning Helps Neural Networks Compute

March 21, 2024

Large language models do better at solving problems when they show their work. Researchers are beginning to understand why.

Never-Repeating Tiles Can Safeguard Quantum Information

February 23, 2024

Two researchers have proved that Penrose tilings, famous patterns that never repeat, are mathematically equivalent to a kind of quantum error correction.

‘Magical’ Error Correction Scheme Proved Inherently Inefficient

January 9, 2024

Locally correctable codes need barely any information to fix errors, but they’re extremely long. Now we know that the simplest versions can’t get any shorter.

Q&A

The ‘Accidental Activist’ Who Changed the Face of Mathematics

January 3, 2024

Throughout her 60-year career, Lenore Blum has developed new perspectives on logic and computation while championing women in mathematics and computer science. Now consciousness is on her mind.

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