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• Here from October 13

  Nº 084 · History

  A town is moving because the mine beneath it is growing

  Kiruna in northern Sweden stands on ground beneath which iron ore is mined. So the town is moving – church and all.

• Here from October 13

  Nº 083 · Technology

  The internet lies on the seabed

  Almost all data between continents runs through cables barely thicker than a garden hose. And no, sharks aren't the problem.

• Here from October 13

  ✦ New research Nº 082 · Nature

  The first complete wiring diagram of a fly brain

  A team has mapped every nerve cell and every connection in the brain of a fruit fly. For 139,255 cells it took years of manual work.

• Here from October 13

  Nº 081 · Technology

  What an artificial neuron actually computes

  It isn't a brain, just a small calculation: weight the inputs, add them up, send them through a curve. Try it.

• Nº 080Interactive

  Here from October 13

  Nº 080 · Technology

  AI would rather guess than say "I don't know".

  A 2025 study says tests reward guessing. Asked for one birthday, a model gave a different wrong date three times.

• Nº 079Interactive

  Here from October 13

  Nº 079 · Technology

  In 1966 a secretary wanted to be alone with a chatbot.

  ELIZA only mirrored sentences back. Even so, Joseph Weizenbaum's secretary asked him to leave the room.

• Here from October 13

  Nº 078 · Technology

  Move 37: When an AI played a move hardly any human would have chosen

  In 2016 AlphaGo played one of the best Go players in the world. One move stunned the pros – and so did one by the human.

• Here from October 13

  Nº 077 · Technology

  In 2024 there were two Nobel Prizes for AI

  Physics for the foundations of neural networks, chemistry for an AI that folds proteins. Both have their roots in physics.

• Here from October 13

  Nº 076 · History

  When Oregon blew up a dead whale with dynamite

  In 1970 half a ton of explosives was meant to turn a beached sperm whale into bite-sized pieces for seagulls. It went differently.

• Here from October 13

  Nº 075 · History

  When Australia's army lost to emus

  In 1932 soldiers with machine guns went out against emus raiding wheat fields. The birds proved hard to kill.

• Here from October 13

  Nº 074 · Space

  A comet from outside our solar system.

  3I/ATLAS was discovered in July 2025 – only the third known visitor from another star system. It's just passing through.

• Here from October 13

  Nº 073 · Technology

  A 13-year-old "beat" Tetris.

  In December 2023 Willis Gibson crashed the 1989 NES Tetris on level 157 – the first person ever to do it.

• Nº 072Interactive

  Here from October 13

  Nº 072 · Technology

  Many AI models stumble over the r's in "strawberry".

  Language models read text as numbers for whole word pieces. Counting letters that appear several times is hard for many of them.

• Here from October 13

  Nº 071 · Technology

  What a counting horse reveals about AI

  Around 1900, Clever Hans tapped out sums with his hoof. Today researchers name a typical AI mistake after him.

• Here from October 13

  Nº 070 · Technology

  Invisible noise turns a panda into a gibbon.

  Researchers laid a barely visible pattern over a photo of a panda. An image recognizer then saw a gibbon – 99.3 % sure.

• Here from October 13

  Nº 069 · Technology

  The first learning computer was supposed to walk and talk

  In 1958 a machine learned to tell left from right after 50 tries. The New York Times saw a being with consciousness in it.