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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then leave the original paper as something only appealing to experts. Totally lying about it in order to make it more broadly appealing is pretty bad.
The paper is still there on the Nature website. I assume experts would go to that. Notwithstanding the difficiencies in the Quanta article, it does at least try to examine something that lay readers would otherwise probably not be aware of.
Original title (dec 1.): "Physicists Create a Wormhole Using a Quantum Computer" [1]
Current title (dec 2.): "Physicists Create a Holographic Wormhole Using a Quantum Computer" [2]
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20221201021130/https://www.quant...
[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20221202022713/https://www.quant...
Though, it seems in this case some scientists who pushed the narrative were dishonest too.
Not the actual death of the magazine, just someone getting upset about lack of depth in an article. Specifically: > "No, scientists haven’t created a wormhole using a quantum computer. They haven’t even simulated one. They simulated some aspects of wormhole dynamics under the crucial assumption that the holographic correspondence of the Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev model holds." Quanta publishes great, detailed articles - but i…
The particular details aren't important; the problem is "model of X" is not the same as "X". In this case the model happens to be using a quantum computer, and X happens to be (some specific variety of) wormhole.
A couple of analogies:
Writing `new Particle { mass = 0; charge = 0; spin = 2; }` on a computer does not mean gravitons have been discovered https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graviton
The UK cannot avoid an economic recession by pouring water into MONIAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC
>The problem is, if they write such bullshit about topics that I do understand, how can I trust their reporting on topics that I do not? Funny how this is true for basically all of science and yet so many popsci authors get away with it, because the vast majority of the audience will not be experts in the field. If you want the true story you'll always have to read the original paper (though sometimes even Nature let…
Yeah, but "creating a wormhole" is laying it on a bit thick, even someone who is only remotely familiar with physics will find this statement highly suspicious - I mean, even in Star Trek, they didn't manage to create a wormhole, they only used one ( https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bajoran_wormhole ).
Two things can be true at the same time: one, quanta magazine is the best publication out there when it comes to popularizing recent advances in fundamental physics and mathematics; and two, this article was bad. If we are allowed to base our opinion of a publication on one article, should I declare that Mateus Araújo's blog is dead to me?
Schrödinger's magazine?
Two things can be true at the same time: one, quanta magazine is the best publication out there when it comes to popularizing recent advances in fundamental physics and mathematics; and two, this article was bad. If we are allowed to base our opinion of a publication on one article, should I declare that Mateus Araújo's blog is dead to me?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I seriously doubt that many of it's readers have sufficiently deep knowledge of QC to properly understand the Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev model But that's the problem. Most people don't understand the underlying science, so they rely on science journalism to distill and explicate complex topics without simplifying and distorting to the point they lose any relationship with the truth. In this case, the writer has failed in th…
I'm not disputing that the Quanta article is factually deficient - although I don't have the relevant specialist knowledge to understand why. I am disputing that this marks the "death" of the magazine.