Emery N. Brown Joins Simons Foundation Board of Directors
Simons Foundation, August 2020The Simons Foundation is pleased to announce that Emery N. Brown, M.D., Ph.D., has joined its board of directors.
CCA’s Brian Metzger Receives 2020 Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists
Simons Foundation, July 2020Astrophysicist Brian Metzger has been named the 2020 Blavatnik National Awards Laureate in Physical Sciences & Engineering by the Blavatnik Family Foundation. The honor recognizes Metzger’s contributions to the discovery of the origins of gold and other heavy elements in the universe. The $250,000 prize is one of the largest for early-career scientists.
Quantum Physicists Crack Mystery of ‘Strange Metals,’ a New State of Matter
Simons Foundation, July 2020Even by the standards of quantum physicists, strange metals are just plain odd. The materials are related to high-temperature superconductors and have surprising connections to the properties of black holes. Electrons in strange metals dissipate energy as fast as they’re allowed to under the laws of quantum mechanics, and the electrical resistivity of a strange metal, unlike that of ordinary metals, is proportional to the temperature.
New View of Nature’s Oldest Light Adds Fresh Twist to Debate Over Universe’s Age
Simons Foundation, July 2020From a mountain high in Chile’s Atacama Desert, astronomers with the National Science Foundation’s Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) have taken a fresh look at the oldest light in the universe. Their new observations plus a bit of cosmic geometry suggest that the universe is 13.77 billion years old, give or take 40 million years.
Led media push for newest findings from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, coordinating with dozens of other institutions. Media coverage in New Scientist, Science News, BBC, Nature, USA Today, UPI and Express.
Plasticity May Make Neurons Vulnerable to Alzheimer’s Disease
Simons Foundation, June 2020Neurons that regularly remodel are more prone to Alzheimer’s disease and die when that remodeling goes awry, a new study suggests. The work is the first to track the progression of Alzheimer’s at the genetic and molecular levels within neurons vulnerable to the disease.
Why Pulsars Shine Bright: A Half-Century-Old Mystery Solved
Simons Foundation, June 2020When Jocelyn Bell first observed the emissions of a pulsar in 1967, the rhythmic pulses of radio waves so confounded astronomers that they considered whether the light could be signals sent by an alien civilization.
Making a Fast Computational Tool Even Faster
Simons Foundation, June 2020Alex Barnett takes a small silver tuning fork from his backpack, thwacks it against his desk and holds it to a microphone. On his computer, the musical tone appears as a steady succession of identical sine waves.
“It’s an A4, or the A above middle C,” says Barnett, who plays classical and jazz piano in addition to serving as group leader for numerical analysis at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Mathematics (CCM). “That’s 440 hertz, or 440 oscillations per second.”
Story for the Simons Foundation's 2019 annual report.
Deconstructing Machine Learning’s Black Box
Simons Foundation, May 2020Artificial intelligence has taken the tech world by storm. AI systems can drive cars, recognize faces and even dethrone world champions at games such as Go. At the Flatiron Institute, scientists are leveraging the same techniques to simulate the universe, track neuron activity in the brain and predict the behavior of many entangled electrons.
Part of the Simons Foundation's 25th-anniversary book.
CCQ Distinguished Research Scientist Angel Rubio Elected Fellow of European Academy of Sciences
Simons Foundation, May 2020The European Academy of Sciences has elected Angel Rubio as a fellow of its materials science division in recognition of his scientific achievements.
Machine Learning Cracks Quantum Chemistry Conundrum
Simons Foundation, May 2020A new machine learning tool can calculate the energy required to make — or break — a molecule with higher accuracy than conventional methods. While the tool can currently only handle simple molecules, it paves the way for future insights in quantum chemistry.