When Google’s Quantum AI team published research in March claiming it could crack Bitcoin’s cryptography far faster than anyone expected, one detail was conspicuously missing: the actual method. Now we know why. According to one of the paper’s co-authors, the US government told Google to keep it secret.

What the paper actually claimed

Google’s researchers estimated that a future quantum computer could break the cryptography protecting Bitcoin in under nine minutes, using fewer than 500,000 physical qubits — roughly 20 times fewer resources than earlier projections. (A qubit is the basic building block of a quantum computer.)

But the team never showed the “circuits” — the step-by-step recipe — that would make such an attack possible. Instead, they published a cryptographic trick called a zero-knowledge proof, which confirms that the method exists without revealing what it is.

“Academic censorship”

That gap wasn’t Google’s choice, says co-author Justin Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation. In a post on June 1, Drake said the optimizations were deliberately withheld and that Google’s own blog quietly acknowledged it had “engaged with the US government.” Drake said he witnessed the situation firsthand, couldn’t say more — and bluntly called it academic censorship.

He didn’t name which agency intervened. The most likely reasoning: publishing the full blueprint would effectively hand a working attack manual to rival nations.

Drake also repeated his sobering odds — a 50% chance that a quantum computer could break the encryption behind Bitcoin and Ethereum before 2032, and a 10% chance before 2030.

The twist: someone rebuilt it anyway

Secrecy has limits. On the same day, independent researcher André Schrottenloher reconstructed the hidden quantum systems on his own — and claimed his version was even more efficient than Google’s.

Why it matters

Ledger’s chief technology officer, Charles Guillemet, summed up the real takeaway. No quantum computer can run these attacks today, he stressed — so this isn’t a doomsday moment. What’s changed is trust in the official timelines. The public record on quantum threats, he argued, is now “demonstrably thinner than reality”: governments are classifying results on one end, while AI tools quietly reconstruct them on the other.

In short, what authorities choose to hide may now tell us more about the true risk than anything researchers are allowed to publish.

Modern space telescopes let us observe galaxies whose light has travelled for billions of years. Each image is, in fact, a window into the past of the universe.

The fascinating part is that by looking so far away we are looking back in time: we see those galaxies as they were, not as they are now. A good excuse to remember how big — and how old — all of this is.

How many people do you need in a room for it to be more likely than not that two of them share a birthday? The answer is surprising: just 23.

With 23 people the probability is already above 50%, and with 70 it is around 99.9%. The key is that we are not comparing each person against a fixed date, but every possible pair among them, and those grow very quickly.

Choosing the right typeface for a blog is not a matter of taste alone: it directly affects readability and the comfort of whoever is reading.

A few quick recommendations:

1. A body text of at least 16-17 px.
2. Generous line spacing (1.5-1.7).
3. Lines no longer than ~70 characters.

This theme follows those three rules by default.

The earth is round. The challenge of any world map is to represent a round earth on a flat surface. We are so used to them that rarely we think about how precisely and realistically they represent the earth.

Today I want to talk about the Gall-Peters projection. This projection represents the earth in a proportionate way, unlike the Mercator projection, which is the one that we are used to. This video will help you understand a little better.

So after this brief introduction to this map projection you know that the most common map projection was made by a Flemish merchant and that is made to make naval navigation very easy, but that it does not represent the earth proportionally and some areas (especially the ones that are far from the equator are drawn bigger than they really are). This map projection is perfect for teaching geography in a way that the projection of the map doesn’t create any confusion on how “big” a continent or a country really is.

You can get more information about this kind of map: www.petersmap.com Also from the wikipedia (although is quite technical): Gall-Peters projection on Wikipedia

"Our virtues and our failings are inseparable like force and matter. When they separate, Man is no more." Nikola Tesla

"Qui tegit veritatem eam timet, nam veritas vincit Omnia." Latin saying

Who covers the truth, is afraid of it, because the truth conquers everything.