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A new study suggests that systems governed by quantum mechanics do not show an exclusively linear evolution in time: in this way, they are sometimes able to unfold into the past and into the future simultaneously.

An international group of physicists concludes in a recent research published in the journal Communications Physics that quantum systems that evolve in one direction or another in time can also be found evolving in unison along both directions. This property shown by quantum systems in certain contexts breaks with the classical temporal conception, in which it is only possible to move forward or backward in time.

The work, carried out by scientists from the universities of Bristol (United Kingdom), Vienna (Austria), the Balearic Islands (Spain) and the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI-Vienna), shows that the limit between the time that going back and forth can be blurred in quantum mechanics. According to a press release from the University of Bristol, the new study forces us to rethink how the flow of time manifests itself in contexts in which quantum laws play a fundamental role.

Harvard University on Tuesday launched the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence, a new University-wide initiative standing at the intersection of neuroscience and artificial intelligence, seeking fundamental principles that underlie both human and machine intelligence. The fruits of discoveries will flow in both directions, enhancing understanding of how humans think, perceive the world around them, make decisions, and learn, thereby advancing the rapidly evolving field of AI.

The institute will be funded by a $500 million gift from Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, which was announced Tuesday by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The gift will support 10 new faculty appointments, significant new computing infrastructure, and resources to allow students to flow between labs in pursuit of ideas and knowledge. The institute’s name honors Zuckerberg’s mother, Karen Kempner Zuckerberg, and her parents — Zuckerberg’s grandparents — Sidney and Gertrude Kempner. Chan and Zuckerberg have given generously to Harvard in the past, supporting students, faculty, and researchers in a range of areas, including around public service, literacy, and cures.

“The Kempner Institute at Harvard represents a remarkable opportunity to bring together approaches and expertise in biological and cognitive science with machine learning, statistics, and computer science to make real progress in understanding how the human brain works to improve how we address disease, create new therapies, and advance our understanding of the human body and the world more broadly,” said President Larry Bacow.

British utility SSE and Norwegian energy giant Equinor announced late last week that they have secured financing to proceed with the construction of the $3.98 billion Dogger Bank C offshore wind farm off England’s northeast coast.

Dogger Bank C offshore wind farm, along with Dogger Bank A and Dogger Bank B, is due to become the largest offshore wind farm in the world upon completion, with an installed capacity of 3.6 gigawatts (GW). Each phase is 1.2 GW.

Dogger Bank C will generate around 6,000 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity a year when completed in 2026.

The US Space Force installed a high tech new radar system this week that it says will be able to detect objects the size of baseballs in orbit.

The massive monitoring system, dubbed the Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR), is located at the Clear Space Force Base near Fairbanks, Alaska, according to The Anchorage Daily News. The radar is slated to support the US missile defense system and provide reconnaissance data in space.

“Today marks an extremely important milestone for US homeland defense,” US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) director Jon Hill said in a press release yesterday. “The LRDR has finished construction, and we can now begin the testing phase that will lead to the full operational use of this vital system.”

Working with two teams of mathematicians, DeepMind engineered an algorithm that can look across different mathematical fields and spot connections that previously escaped the human mind. The AI doesn’t do all the work—when fed sufficient data, it finds patterns. These patterns are then passed on to human mathematicians to guide their intuition and creativity towards new laws of nature.

“I was not expecting to have some of my preconceptions turned on their head,” said Dr. Marc Lackenby at the University of Oxford, one of the scientists collaborating with DeepMind, to Nature, where the study was published.

The AI comes just a few months after DeepMind’s previous triumph in solving a 50-year-old challenge in biology. This is different. For the first time, machine learning is aiming at the core of mathematics—a science for spotting patterns that eventually leads to formally-proven ideas, or theorems, about how our world works. It also emphasized collaboration between machine and man in bridging observations to working theorems.