Practical Magic

504 papers · Page 1 of 6

We’ve finally made digital messages that are physically impossible to copy—even a perfect hacker couldn't do it because physics won't allow it.

AI & ML arxiv | Mar 13

There’s a new super-thin wrap that sucks up low noise so well it basically makes objects invisible to sound.

Physics arxiv | Mar 13

We can now map the giant mountains at the bottom of the ocean just by looking at the tiny ripples on the surface from space.

Physics arxiv | Mar 13

A new AI can take a blurry photo from a basic telescope and figure out exactly what it would look like if a billion-dollar space telescope took it.

Space & Astronomy arxiv | Mar 13

Imagine walls that physically bend and flex just to bounce your Wi-Fi signal directly to your phone wherever you're sitting.

Physics arxiv | Mar 13

We finally have a way to calculate if a 3D building will stand up even if it doesn't have a single flat surface on it.

Physics arxiv | Mar 13

You can now hide secret pictures inside a beam of light just by twisting the waves in a way the human eye can't see.

Physics arxiv | Mar 13

We made a special "tape" that can stick wireless power to a wall and guide it around so the signal doesn't just fade away.

Physics arxiv | Mar 13

Most of the water dropped by firefighting planes never actually hits the fire—it just turns into mist or evaporates before it gets there.

Physics arxiv | Mar 13

Scientists are using a network of spinning stars to create a telescope the size of a galaxy to solve the universe's biggest mysteries.

Space & Astronomy arxiv | Mar 13

Scientists used ultrasound to "hack" the brains of newbies and make them look like expert meditators in just two weeks.

Life Science biorxiv | Mar 13

If you play certain sounds while someone is sleeping, they’ll actually be more decisive about tough choices the next day.

Life Science biorxiv | Mar 13

Giving your inner ear a tiny zap of electricity while you sleep can actually trigger a lucid dream.

Life Science biorxiv | Mar 13

We found a way to film a single molecule for over 24 hours straight without it "fading out" like they usually do.

Life Science biorxiv | Mar 13

People on Reddit are reporting "hidden" side effects of Ozempic and Mounjaro, like random chills and changes to their periods.

Health & Medicine medrxiv | Mar 13

A simple brain wave test can tell you if that spinal surgery will actually fix your back pain or just be a total waste of time.

Health & Medicine medrxiv | Mar 13

If you talk about "maintaining" the world instead of "changing" it, the political fight over climate change mostly disappears.

Psychology psyarxiv | Mar 13

Planting native flowers might actually be worse for city birds and bees than those "exotic" gardens people love to hate.

Society & Education socarxiv | Mar 13

Trade wars aren't actually stopping global trade because individual companies are just ignoring the politics and doing their own thing.

Society & Education socarxiv | Mar 13

You can predict what the Fed is going to do weeks early just by watching "secret" emergency cash requests from foreign banks.

Economics ssrn | Mar 13

Blocking new roads in National Forests sounds green, but it actually does absolutely nothing to stop wildfires.

Economics ssrn | Mar 13

You’d actually make more money if you ignored the experts and messed with your investment portfolio 94% less often.

Economics ssrn | Mar 13

Central banks might want to start setting interest rates based on how much regular people are freaking out about the price of groceries.

Economics ssrn | Mar 13

Credit rating agencies are so slow that by the time they warn you a country is going broke, the disaster is already ancient history.

Economics ssrn | Mar 13

In developing countries, not having job websites actually makes it faster for companies to hire people.

Economics ssrn | Mar 13

Stock analysts who actually sign up as official "advisers" give way better tips because they’re legally forced to be honest with you.

Economics ssrn | Mar 13

You only need to put rat traps on 4% of a farm to protect the entire field from getting trashed.

Economics ssrn | Mar 13

Teaching healthcare workers how to manage their supplies actually saves more lives than giving them extra medical training.

Economics ssrn | Mar 13

You can actually predict if an industry is going to tank just by counting how many times the word "shall" appears in its regulations.

Economics ssrn | Mar 13

Corporate "innovation labs" are basically $100 billion money pits that make projects four times more expensive and a year late.

Economics ssrn | Mar 13

A simple software update at the Patent Office accidentally broke the main way scientists study whether patents are actually worth anything.

Economics ssrn | Mar 13

Imagine a paper-thin sticker you can slap on a wall to listen to the room next door, and get this—it doesn't even need a battery.

AI & ML arxiv | Mar 16

Scientists figured out how to 'pre-mess-up' light pulses so that when they hit a chaotic electron beam, everything cancels out perfectly.

Physics arxiv | Mar 16

A total screw-up in the lab—leaving behind an accidental layer of metal—just solved a quantum computing problem that’s been driving people crazy for decades.

Physics arxiv | Mar 16

Researchers used a tiny 'nano-printing' trick to freeze electrons into a solid crystal that stays stable at temperatures where it normally should've melted.

Physics arxiv | Mar 16

Whether a city is a neat grid or a messy sprawl actually changes how well a quantum computer can figure out its traffic problems.

Physics arxiv | Mar 16

Scientists figured out how to use the 'spin' of a single electron to physically crank a microscopic carbon engine.

Physics arxiv | Mar 16

You can actually change the color of a high-tech laser just by physically bending the glass cable it's traveling through.

Physics arxiv | Mar 16

If you blast battery parts with neutron beams, they actually start charging and discharging way faster than they did before.

Physics arxiv | Mar 16

Imagine a wearable sensor that spots invisible magnetic fields using nothing but liquid crystals—no batteries or chips required.

Physics arxiv | Mar 16

Doctors can now use one single beam of particles to blast a tumor and film the whole thing happening in real-time.

Physics arxiv | Mar 16

Scientists made a material that can 'catch' a shockwave and hold onto its energy so you can use it later.

Physics arxiv | Mar 16

Researchers are literally shooting quantum computers with particle beams to see exactly how space radiation shreds their data.

Physics arxiv | Mar 16

Weirdly enough, people would rather listen to an advisor who's usually 'right,' even if following their advice actually makes things worse for them.

Psychology psyarxiv | Mar 16

Our computers are way slower than they should be because they're hardwired to think time only goes one way.

AI & ML arxiv | Mar 17

If someone hacks a self-driving car, the way it steers leaves a 'fingerprint' that's so weird the car can actually tell it's being hijacked.

AI & ML arxiv | Mar 17

We can finally fix quantum computer glitches by just looking at the different 'personalities' of the background noise.

Physics arxiv | Mar 17

Forget silicon chips—someone built an AI that thinks using radio waves bouncing around inside a metal box.

Physics arxiv | Mar 17

AI agents just figured out how to pull rare metals out of nasty industrial wastewater and old magnets in only a couple of days.

Physics arxiv | Mar 17

New X-rays can basically 'film' the inside of stuff as it melts at a wild 25,000 frames per second.

Physics arxiv | Mar 17

Math proves that as long as an object has at least eight points, any photo of it is basically a unique, un-faked fingerprint.

Physics arxiv | Mar 17

You can actually map out exactly what's inside an object just by listening to the way sound hits its surface.

Physics arxiv | Mar 17

When AI tries to simulate how things move, it sometimes 'hallucinates' weird physics behaviors that don't actually exist in the real world.

Physics arxiv | Mar 17

Scientists used a feedback loop to basically bully a material into performing better than its own physical limits should allow.

Physics arxiv | Mar 17

Scientists want to hunt for dark matter by looking for tiny footprints it might have left in ancient rocks billions of years ago.

Space & Astronomy arxiv | Mar 17

Physicists are using the math of flowing fluids to measure how fast big corporations are gobbling up land.

Physics arxiv | Mar 17

There’s a new atomic sensor that can hear radio waves vibrating even slower than your own heart beats.

Physics arxiv | Mar 17

Scientists finally created a 'holy grail' superconductor that doesn't fall apart when you bring it back to normal room pressure.

Physics arxiv | Mar 17

A simple pile of sand can actually record and play back sounds like a mechanical tape recorder.

Physics arxiv | Mar 17

Scientists turned those undersea internet cables into a massive microphone to listen to 400,000 whale calls.

Physics arxiv | Mar 17

We’re sending a tiny telescope—only 12 centimeters wide—into space to hunt for Earth-like planets next door.

Space & Astronomy arxiv | Mar 17

Engineers made a material with almost zero friction that works in normal air, which could lead to machine parts that never wear out.

Physics arxiv | Mar 17

Engineers built a material that literally 'sweats' liquid metal to heal its own cracks when it gets too hot.

Physics arxiv | Mar 17

Scientists designed a 'quantum battery' by copying the way bacteria soak up sunlight.

Physics arxiv | Mar 17

Scientists created 'knots' made of light that can fly through messy air turbulence without losing their shape.

Physics arxiv | Mar 17

If you mix a little antimatter into a laser beam, it makes the whole thing ten times more powerful.

Physics arxiv | Mar 17

Quantum computers are starting to use the physical speed of atoms as a 'switch' to handle individual math problems.

Physics arxiv | Mar 17

A new medical framework uses 'yogic psychology' to predict mental health issues better than the usual doctor's checklist.

Health & Medicine medrxiv | Mar 17

If you're trying to win an argument with someone who's tired, just keep talking—how long you speak matters way more than what you're actually saying.

Psychology psyarxiv | Mar 17

For-profit medical schools in the Caribbean are 'shopping' for regulators in places like Kazakhstan just to dodge quality rules.

Society & Education edarxiv | Mar 17

Letting businesses use their patents as collateral for loans can boost a whole country’s economic output by 14%.

Economics ssrn | Mar 17

We could cut the climate impact of flying by 60% just by avoiding those white 'contrails'—and it would barely cost anything extra.

Economics ssrn | Mar 17

That 'simple' small claims court meant to help artists protect their work is so confusing that most cases just get thrown out.

Economics ssrn | Mar 17

Judges aren't just born biased—they 'catch' it from their colleagues or from seeing social unrest early in their careers.

Economics ssrn | Mar 17

When the government cracks down on farmers burning fields, industrial pollution actually spikes because the inspectors are too busy to watch the factories.

Economics ssrn | Mar 17

Swapping the types of crops farmers plant is twice as effective at saving groundwater as buying high-tech irrigation gear.

Economics ssrn | Mar 17

Patent applications are four times longer than they used to be just because word processors make it so easy to copy-paste filler text.

Economics ssrn | Mar 17

Swapping social media for ChatGPT for two months actually gives your memory and critical thinking a massive boost.

Economics ssrn | Mar 17

A person’s language starts shifting in specific 'mathematical' ways—like a shrinking sense of time—right before a mental health crisis hits.

Economics ssrn | Mar 17

Public companies are basically 'day trading' their own stock to boost their market value by about 1% every year.

Economics ssrn | Mar 17

Just being mentioned in the news—even for something good—triggers a 'spotlight tax' where auditors start charging you way more.

Economics ssrn | Mar 17

About half of a brand's dominance comes from secret, long-term deals with grocery stores, not because people actually like the product more.

Economics ssrn | Mar 17

The legal test for design patents is psychologically rigged to help people get away with ripping off designs.

Economics ssrn | Mar 17

Every single hectare of coca grown in Colombia ends up costing about $48,000 in overdose deaths here in the States.

Economics ssrn | Mar 17

Auditing just one company at random makes other firms behave better, simply because they use the same broker.

Economics ssrn | Mar 17

Investment banks are lowballing IPOs so badly that companies now have to hire a second set of 'watchdog' advisers just to keep an eye on them.

Economics ssrn | Mar 17

Scientists are basically plumbing actual sunshine through silver pipes to grow veggies in windowless basements, ditching the LED bulbs.

Physics arxiv | Mar 18

A new VR headset uses mirrors to kill the lag that makes you want to puke.

AI & ML arxiv | Mar 18

New AI can peer into a computer chip's microscopic guts to find "spy tech" hidden by sketchy manufacturers.

AI & ML arxiv | Mar 18

Researchers built a "ghost mode" for robots that calculates the exact path to sneak around without being seen.

AI & ML arxiv | Mar 18

If you teach AI to look at medical scans like they're ripples of light, it gets way better at spotting cancer—no matter what hospital gear you’re using.

Physics arxiv | Mar 18

A new bit of code fixes airport gridlock in 10 seconds, while the "pro" software usually sits there spinning its wheels for an hour.

Physics arxiv | Mar 18

Scientists made a "nuclear foam" fuel as light as air that could actually get us into deep space in a hurry.

Physics arxiv | Mar 18

Doctors are starting to think of disease as a "physics fail" where your cells just forget how to move together in a crowd.

Physics arxiv | Mar 18

If you add DNA to a liquid, you can make it swirl and churn in tiny pipes where turbulence is supposed to be impossible.

Physics arxiv | Mar 18

Scientists found a way to flip a material’s electrical switch just by squeezing it, no battery required.

Physics arxiv | Mar 18

Scientists figured out how to make heat move faster than the theoretical "speed limit" it's supposed to have.

Physics arxiv | Mar 18

Whether heat can kill a tumor depends entirely on its shape—if it's too jagged and fractal, the treatment might fail.

Physics arxiv | Mar 18

You can turn non-magnetic materials into magnets simply by "shaking" them with quick pulses of electricity.

Physics arxiv | Mar 18

A massive 84% of teens are venting to AI for emotional support, and many say it’s actually better than talking to a human.

Psychology psyarxiv | Mar 18