Communications of the ACM
An edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
From ACM TechNews
AI Poker Bot Is First to Beat Professionals at Multiplayer Game
A new artificial intelligence program beat elite professional poker players at six-player no-limit Texas hold'em poker.
From ACM News
Algorithms Spot Millions of California's Tiniest Quakes in Historical Data
When it comes to earthquakes, large, destructive ones dominate the headlines.
From ACM News
Mars Methane Hunt Comes p Empty, Flummoxing Scientists
A spacecraft that was supposed to solve the mystery of methane on Mars has instead compounded scientists' confusion.
From ACM News
Black Hole Pictured for First Time, in Spectacular Detail
Astronomers have finally glimpsed the blackness of a black hole. By stringing together a global network of radio telescopes, they have for the first time produced...
From ACM News
Japanese Space Probe Drops Explosive on Asteroid Ryugu
For the past year, space probe Hayabusa2 has pelted asteroid Ryugu with bouncing probes, shot a bullet at it, and taken a bite of it—all for science.
From ACM Opinion
AI Pioneer: 'The Dangers of Abuse Are Very Real'
Yoshua Bengio is one of three computer scientists who last week shared the US$1-million A. M. Turing award—one of the field's top prizes.
From ACM News
GPS Glitch Threatens Thousands of Scientific Instruments
Researchers worldwide are racing to get ahead of a bug in the US Global Positioning System (GPS) that could cause data loggers, including thousands of scientific...
From ACM News
Siberia's Ancient Ghost Clan Starts to Surrender Its Secrets
Samantha Brown didn't have high hopes when she opened the ziplock bag containing some 700 shards of bone. It would be a lot of work to analyse them and none was...
From ACM News
Four New DNA Letters Double Life's Alphabet
The DNA of life on Earth naturally stores its information in just four key chemicals—guanine, cytosine, adenine and thymine, commonly referred to as G, C, A and...
From ACM News
Japan's Hayabusa2 Craft Touches Down on Asteroid Ryugu
It was a brief but historic tap on the surface of the asteroid Ryugu, at 7:29 am Japan time on 22 February. The Hayabusa2 spacecraft touched down at its target...
From ACM News
Gravitational-Wave Observatory LIGO Set to Double Its Detecting Power
Spotting gravitational waves is due to become an almost hourly event in the next decade. Starting around 2023, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory...
From ACM News
Hidden History of the Milky Way Revealed by Extensive Star Maps
Last April, Amina Helmi felt goose bumps while driving to work in the northern Netherlands. It had nothing to do with the weather—it was pure anticipation. Just...
From ACM News
China Becomes First Nation to Land on the Moon's Far Side
A Chinese probe has made a historic touch-down on the far side of the Moon, according to the country's state-run media. It is the first time a probe has visited...
From ACM News
Asteroid-Sampling Mission Zeroes In on Tiny Space Rock
For the second time this year, a spacecraft is about to partner with an asteroid in an intimate dance.
From ACM News
World’s First Automated Volcano Forecast Predicts Mount Etna's Eruptions
Smoke filled the cabin as the Boeing 747 plunged towards snow-covered mountains in southern Alaska. All four engines had shut down, and it took the pilots eight...
From ACM News
Machine Learning Spots Natural Selection at Work in Human Genome
Pinpointing where and how the human genome is evolving can be like hunting for a needle in a haystack.
From ACM News
The World's Strongest MRI Machines Are Pushing Human Imaging to New Limits
On a cold morning in Minneapolis last December, a man walked into a research centre to venture where only pigs had gone before: into the strongest magnetic resonance...
From ACM News
Europe Shows First Cards in €1-Billion Quantum Bet
Plans to build two working quantum computers are among the first winners to be announced in a €1-billion (US$1.1 billion) funding initiative of the European Commission...
From ACM News
Teleportation Over a 6-Kilometre Cable, Courtesy of Quantum Powers
The fibre-optic cables that carry Internet traffic can also be used for a powerful form of the strange phenomenon known as quantum teleportation.
From ACM News