Richard Hollingham, for BBC: The first generation of colonists born in space will have parents with a strong connection to Earth. It is more intriguing to examine how the colonists’ grandchildren and their grandchildrens’ children will adapt to life in the new environment. Space, not Earth, will be their home. The fastest theoretical journey to…

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Michael Nielsen, for Quanta Magazine: Using this statistical model, the computer could take a new French sentence — one it had never seen before — and figure out the most likely corresponding English sentence. And that would be the program’s translation. When I first heard about this approach, it sounded ludicrous. This statistical model throws…

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