Frankly speaking ...

You are standing on a street corner when a sub-zero wind gusts against your face. You feel the sharp, biting sting  −  a raw, undeniable presence. Yet, from the perspective of neurobiology, there is only the dry arithmetic of sodium ions and neurotransmitters. This chasm between the objective "firing" and the subjective "feeling" is what philosophers call the "Hard Problem," and for decades, it has remained the ultimate stalemate of science. In an effort to break this deadlock, the world's leading theorists gathered in 2022 at the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC) for what was essentially a debate on the nature of experience. The exchange revealed a field in crisis: experts no longer disagree merely on data, but on what phenomena require explanation. Are we looking for a broadcast, a mathematical structure, or a sophisticated 'best guess'  −  and can any single theory capture it? What emerged were the following provoc...

If you’re reading Superheavy: Making and Breaking the Periodic Table by Kit Chapman , it really helps to understand the concept of 'cross-sections.' However, the book's explanation is pretty brief. To help clear things up, I put together this summary of what cross-sections actually mean in the context of creating new elements. Cross Sections In nuclear physics, a cross-section is a measure of the probability that a specific nuclear reaction (like fusion) will occur. When scientists say the cross-sections get smaller as the atomic number (Z) increases, they mean that it becomes exponentially harder and less likely for two nuclei to successfully fuse and survive as a new, super-heavy element. Think of the cross-section as the “size of the target” you are trying to hit. As you try to create heavier elements, that target shrinks from the size of a barn door to the size of a needle’s eye. Infographic: The Challenge of Element Synthesis Why the Cross-Section Decreases The pr...

On January 6, 2026 , the mathematical community reached a significant milestone: the resolution of Erdős problem #728 . While mathematical problems are solved daily, this breakthrough marks the first time an open Erdős problem—historically the domain of human intuition—was documented as resolved through the collaboration of artificial intelligence and formal verification. The Problem: Gaps in Factorials Originally posed in 1975 by Paul Erdős and colleagues, problem #728 explores the deep architecture of prime factorisations within binomial coefficients. The Technical Goal : The problem asks if there are infinitely many integers a ,  b , and n that satisfy a complex divisibility condition: a ! b ! ∣  n !( a  +  b  −  n )! under specific constraints. The “Spirit” of the Challenge : The original wording was noted by mathematician Terence Tao as being slightly “misformulated,” allowing for trivial solutions if the variables were allowed to be extremely large. The Fix : To re...

Reading Pathogenesis by Jonathan Kennedy  the first revelation came very early in the book. In the introduction Kennedy claimed that human birth wouldn't be possible without an ancient  retrovirus . I went down a rabbit hole trying to make sense of it, and that’s when I hit on this surprising number… 8% That is the percentage of your genome that is made up of Endogenous Retroviruses (ERVs) . To put that in perspective, the protein-coding genes that make up your “human” parts - your eye colour, your enzymes, your height - only account for about 1-2% of your DNA. You are literally more “ancient virus” than you are “human.” Usually, we are told this is just “ junk DNA ”—fossils of old infections that didn’t kill our ancestors millions of years ago. But recent research suggests something far stranger. We didn’t just survive these infections; we domesticated them. In fact, without these ancient viral invaders, mammals as we know them likely wouldn’t exist. The Placenta Goes V...

This post was first published on 15 October 2020, but that site has since been shut down. Part 1  of this series explored pseudo-random values—statistically random values derived from a known starting point. This article explores using random values in testing. Randomness in test invocation is common; for instance,  JUnit5  provides an annotation to  randomise the order of test execution . This article, however, examines a testing style using randomly generated input values to test  properties  of code, known as “Property Based Testing”. Why use random values in testing? Defining suitable positive and negative test cases to exercise code is often difficult. Automating the execution of many randomly selected tests covers a broader range of input values. Furthermore, recording and reporting failing tests allows for replay and debugging. Property-based testing verifies program code using a large range of relevant inputs by generating a random sample of valid v...