Finding living planets
Life evolves on planets. And planets with life evolve
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MOST PIECES in this series of briefs have stayed within the realm of the biological, examining life at the levels of the species, the individual, the organ and the cell. But the first dealt with a subject central to biology but not inherently of it: molecules. No molecule can be said to be truly alive, and not all molecules are biological. But some are, and they are biological in distinctive, illuminating ways, revealing how life gets things done and passes information down the generations.
This article appeared in the Schools brief section of the print edition under the headline “Worlds enough, and time”
Schools brief September 4th 2021
More from Schools brief
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AI needs regulation, but what kind, and how much?
Different countries are taking different approaches to regulating artificial intelligence
![](https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=80,format=auto/content-assets/images/20240817_ABD001.jpg)
LLMs will transform medicine, media and more
But not without a helping (human) hand
![](https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=80,format=auto/content-assets/images/20240810_ABD001.jpg)
How AI models are getting smarter
Deep neural networks are learning diffusion and other tricks
The race is on to control the global supply chain for AI chips
The focus is no longer just on faster chips, but on more chips clustered together
AI firms will soon exhaust most of the internet’s data
Can they create more?
A short history of AI
In the first of six weekly briefs, we ask how AI overcame decades of underdelivering