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Claude computes a nine-loop amplitude in N=4 super-Yang-Mills

When a theoretical physicist challenged AI companies to solve one of particle physics’ messiest calculation problems, he expected to prove LLMs had hit a wall. Instead, Claude handed him the answer four weeks later.

Nine loops, 96 CPUs, and zero human supervision: How Claude solved a frontier problem in theoretical physics.

The Challenge: Matt von Hippel, a former theoretical physicist and science writer, issued an open challenge to AI companies: use reasonable academic computational resources to solve a major outstanding problem in amplitudeology (a branch of particle physics). Specifically, calculate the nine-loop scattering amplitude for a toy model theory called N=4 super-Yang-Mills.

* The Achievement: Anthropic researchers (Liam Fitzpatrick and Siddharth Mishra-Sharma) used a science harness running an advanced Claude model (Fable 5.1) to compute the six-particle amplitude at nine loops—a complexity level previously unreached directly by human researchers.

* How It Was Done:

* The prompt given to the AI was simple: “The problem is to compute the Six-particle (hexagon) amplitude in planar N=4 SYM at nine loops.”

* Claude operated almost entirely autonomously, running Python/SymPy code and managing the workflow with basic prompts to keep working over several days.

Continue reading “Claude computes a nine-loop amplitude in N=4 super-Yang-Mills” | >

Popular Supplement Increases Strength Even Without Exercise, Study Shows

Talk to any young athlete, and they’ll know about creatine.

It’s one of the most popular supplements for improving muscle recovery and preserving muscle mass – used by gym junkies around the world.

Now, new research adds to tentative evidence that creatine may benefit the body and brain even without exercise.

Philadelphia designer wins $300,000 as NASA pays $650,000 for Mars food ideas

It focused on a food plan for a 15-person astronaut crew for 500 Martian sols (a sol is roughly 24 hours and 37 minutes, totaling about 513 Earth days).

Ukeje’s modular food ecosystem, envisions a system that cooks fresh meals daily and has provisions to work through shortages of power, water, equipment or crew time.

“We’re thrilled to keep advancing the future of space food systems with this challenge,” said Jennifer Edmunson, program manager for Centennial Challenges at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “The future of human space exploration will rely on innovative food systems, and it is amazing how much ingenuity this challenge has helped us identify from participants near and far.”

Human Continuity Architecture A Systems Safety Framework for Human–AI Civilization

Human continuity architecture: a systems-safety framework for human–ai civilization.

AI Could Transform Humanity — But Can We Survive Its Failure?

AI could transform medicine, science, robotics and human prosperity—but increasingly powerful AI also creates civilization-scale risks through failure, misuse, dependency and concentrated power.

Greg Allison introduces the Human Continuity Architecture (HCA), a Preliminary Revision 0 systems-safety framework for preserving human continuity, resilience and agency in an increasingly AI-dependent civilization.

Human Continuity Architecture — official website https://www.humancontinuityarchitecture.org/

Continue reading “Human Continuity Architecture A Systems Safety Framework for Human–AI Civilization” | >

Rethinking the origins and functions of adaptive immunity

The adaptive immune system (AIS) is traditionally viewed as a defensive vertebrate innovation forged by pathogen pressure. Yet many of its core features suggest it is a homeostatic, regulatory circuit, not simply a sophisticated means of antimicrobial warfare. The horizontal transfer of mitochondria—–endogenous endosymbiotic organelles—is a conserved mechanism for maintaining tissue homeostasis through metabolic rescue but can alter a cell’s identity and provoke immune responses. We propose that escalating multicellular complexity accommodated mitochondrial mobility—and the inevitable intrinsic immunological danger it presents—through a complementary supervisory system with buffering (tolerance), contextualization (specificity), memory, and eliminatory capacities.

Scientists put a tiny lump of metal in two places at once in record-breaking quantum experiment

Scientists have pulled off a mind-bending quantum experiment that sounds almost impossible: they showed that tiny metal particles made of thousands of atoms can exist in multiple places at once. Using advanced laser techniques, researchers at the University of Vienna observed quantum interference in sodium nanoparticles far larger than the kinds of particles usually seen behaving this way. The finding pushes quantum mechanics into a new realm, suggesting that even surprisingly “large” objects still obey the bizarre rules of the quantum world.

An expert-level generalist AI for abdominal CT diagnosis

Artificial intelligence (AI) in radiology aspires to deliver expert-level diagnosis across diverse clinical tasks, yet existing supervised strategies remain limited in scope. We developed RADAR, a generalist vision-language model trained on more than 400,000 contrast-enhanced abdominal computed tomography (CT) examinations and 15 million anatomy-wise image-text pairs, learning directly from clinical reports without manual annotation. Throughout internal and external evaluations across multiple centers and varied clinical scenarios, RADAR achieved high diagnostic performance and robust generalization for 18 anatomical structures and 146 imaging findings. In a reader study, RADAR assistance increased the diagnostic sensitivity of 26 radiologists by ~10%.

Inside Firefly’s new Texas facility built to help power NASA’s moon base

CEDAR PARK, Texas (KXAN) — Lunar landers are making a new home in Central Texas.

On Tuesday, Firefly Aerospace celebrated the completion of a new clean room facility at its Cedar Park spacecraft campus, an expansion company leaders say will help support a growing number of lunar missions and future spacecraft production.

“What it really lets us able to do is that you can kind of have spacecraft flowing through the production line really smoothly,” said Ray Allensworth, vice president of spacecraft at Firefly Aerospace.

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