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Technology

Shock discovery tears up the rules of time and space inside a computer

Time and memory space are the two main constraints on what we can compute, and understanding their relationship is a key part of computational complexity research

By Matthew Sparkes

28 February 2025

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

How do time and space relate to computation? We have a new answer

Xuanyu Han/Getty Images

An astonishing discovery about the relationship between the amount of memory a computation requires and how long it takes has wowed computer scientists – although it isn’t clear if there are any practical applications.

“It kind of shakes my world view,” says at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who made the discovery. “I’m still just shocked that it even exists.”

Time and memory space are the two main constraints on what we…

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