THE DREAM OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE has never been just to make a grandmaster-beating chess engine or a chatbot that tries to break up a marriage. It has been to hold a mirror to our own intelligence, that we might understand ourselves better. Researchers seek not simply artificial intelligence but artificial general intelligence, or AGI-a system with humanlike adaptability and creativity.

With anaesthetics and brain organoids, we are finally testing whether quantum effects can explain consciousness. We may have misunderstood this long-derided idea, says George Musser

Quantum test of venerable thought experiment suggests facts are relative.

Physics seems to be one of the only domains of human life where truth is clear-cut. The laws of physics describe hard reality. They are grounded in mathematical rigor and experimental proof. They give answers, not endless muddle. There is not one physics for you and one physics for me but a single physics for everyone and everywhere. Physics often seems weird, but that's a good sign-it is not beholden to preconceptions. In a world that can seem claustrophobic, where the same debates go round in circles, physics injects some genuine novelty into life and jolts us out of the ruts we fall into.