The first lab-created 'quantum abacus'

Do you want to know whether a very large integer is a prime number or not? Or if it is a "lucky number"? A new study by SISSA, carried out in collaboration with the University of Trieste and the University of Saint Andrews, ...

Prions: New possible therapeutic target discovered

Prion diseases, such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy ("mad cow disease"), are lethal neurodegenerative infectious diseases that affect humans and other mammals and for which there is currently no cure.

Octopus brain and human brain share the same 'jumping genes'

The octopus is an exceptional organism with an extremely complex brain and cognitive abilities that are unique among invertebrates. So much so that in some ways it has more in common with vertebrates than with invertebrates. ...

Dark energy: Neutron stars will tell us if it's only an illusion

A huge amount of mysterious dark energy is necessary to explain cosmological phenomena, such as the accelerated expansion of the Universe, using Einstein's theory. But what if dark energy was just an illusion and general ...

Distant galaxies and the true nature of dark matter

At the center of spiral galaxies—those near to us but also those billions of light-years away—there is a vast spherical region made up of dark matter particles. This region has two defining characteristics: a density ...

The Riemann conjecture unveiled by physics

A mystery of mathematics that has remained unsolved for more than 150 years can be unraveled thanks to a completely unexpected approach coming from statistical physics. This is the important conclusion of Giuseppe Mussardo, ...

Simulations of polymers? A quantum puzzle

Using computers to study polymers has always been a major challenge for scientific computation, especially for long and densely packed biomolecules, like DNA. New perspectives are now opening up through quantum computing. ...

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