We have, for the first time, a physical path to storing information in the most efficient and fastest way allowed by nature. It can save the environment and accelerate AI and its connectivity to unprecedented speeds. There lies our salvation, but also our possible doom.

In science, random fluctuations (e.g., noise) are typically regarded as a nuisance to be minimized or avoided if possible. Yet in many important scenarios, valuable information can be gleaned from their careful study. In this talk, Ariel Amir discusses three such examples, from different disciplines.

Galaxies are complex collections of stars, gas, and dark matter. The largest galaxies host many of the Universe’s stars and harbor the most extreme supermassive black holes. Today these massive galaxies are ancient relics – they stopped forming stars long ago and shine with a dim, reddish glow.

Safronova describes how quantum clocks work can act as new observatories for this invisible universe, searching for subtle drifts in their ticking that could signal dark matter, and testing gravity on Earth and, in the future, in space.

This talk tells the story of symmetry in theoretical physics, and its interplay with developments in our understanding of gravity over the years. In this talk, McNamara explores the power of symmetry as a tool for building physical theories, and how the recent explosion of generalized notions of symmetry has led to concrete, specific predictions about our universe.

In this talk, Cranmer describes some of the ways that AI is revolutionizing science, and how these advances aren’t enabled by AI alone. He ends with some thoughts about what this means for the future of science.

Our civilization has learned how to turn sand into silicon chips, silicon chips into neural networks, and neural networks into Artificial Intelligences (AIs). Over the last half decade, the capabilities of large language model AIs (like ChatGPT and Gemini) have leapt from babbling preschoolers to International Math Olympiad gold medallists, and now beyond. This talk reviews recent progress in training AIs to do science and reasoning, and speculates as to what it will mean for the future of physics if these trends continue.

This lecture tells the story of the neutrino, from the first inklings of its existence a century ago up to its present-day role at the forefront of astronomy and physics. Along the way Johns talks about some of the most profound aspects of quantum mechanics and some of the most extreme events in the universe. Learn what makes this particle so unusual and what we hope to accomplish with the monumental facilities built to detect it.

By cooling atoms to temperatures just a tiny fraction of a degree above absolute zero, we can slow their motion enough to observe their strange quantum behavior directly. At these nanokelvin temperatures, atoms no longer behave like tiny billiard balls—they start to act like waves.

In this talk, McQuinn goes back in time to reconstruct the early history of small galaxies and explore the impact that starlight from massive stars has on the galaxy formation process using images obtained from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.