Could AI Help Us Decipher an Alien Language?

A group of researchers from the U.K. and Italy say that AI could help us decipher alien languages by studying how AI systems develop their own language. They used a simple example of communicating position information and showed how the patterns of the language can be decoded and, to reasonable accuracy (78%), deciphered by humans. The same method, they say, might become useful one day to communicate with aliens. Or maybe the AIs are the aliens? Summary here, paper here.

This episode of Science News covers axions. Axions were introduced to the world of physics in the 1970’s, now researchers believe they might be the particles that make up dark matter. While early conceptions about axions have since been proven wrong, the particles are now making a comeback as the best motivated candidates for dark matter. Let’s find out why. You can take the quiz here.

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In a First, Physicists Con­firm Super­flu­id­ity in Super­solid

I admit it’s taken me a moment to wrap my head around this. Physicists from the University of Innsbruck have confirmed that a rigid, regular lattice is also a superfluid. They did this by observing the hallmark of superfluidity – that is, the presence of quantized vortices when the supersolid is made to rotate. The supersolid in question is an ultra-cooled cloud of Dysprosium atoms (don’t ask me why) that settles into a regular lattice, hence, a solid. The reason this is confusing is that the superfluid motion is not that of the atoms of the supersolid but of quasiparticles, which are collective motions of the atoms. While supersolids have been created before, this is the first convincing evidence of their superfluidity. Truly worthy of a publication in Nature magazine. Press release here.

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AI Granny Scams the Scammers

The U.K. company o2 has used an AI-powered voice to keep telephone scammers in the line. The AI, dubbed “Daisy,” can answer in real-time and keeps scammers engaged with chit-chat about knitting and provides false personal details. Unfortunately, it’s not an app you can download, but was shown as a demonstration to mark International Fraud Awareness Week (Nov 17-23). I am sure it would be a big hit on the consumer market. More here.

Our podcast “Science with Sabine” is available on Spotify, Amazon, Apple, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Radio Public, and YouTube.