solve the downwarrens problem

The Witcher 3 - Ladies of the Wood, Trail of Treats, Johnny, Whispering Hillock, ealdorman

A step-by-step guide to completing the Ladies of the Wood quest, from tracking down Johnny to joining up with the ealdorman of Downwarren.

This page covers Ladies of the Wood, Trail of Treats, Johnny, Whispering Hillock and ealdorman . If you're looking for more assistance, our Witcher 3 walkthrough can help.

To begin the quest, open up your Inventory and read the book 'The Ladies of the Night' under your Quest Items. Once you've learned more about the Trail of Treats, mount your steed and ride to the windswept forest indicated by your objective marker.

Ladies of the Wood

Use your Witcher Senses to find the shrine that marks the start of the Trail of Treats

On arrival at your destination, start exploring the area until you locate the strange wooden statue adorned with a necklace of delicious, sugary sweets.

Follow the Trail of Treats using your Witcher Senses

Next, activate your senses and follow the trail of goodies along the dirt track running south-east. Continue onward as it winds through the marshland until you reach the small cluster of buildings.

Speak to the children playing in the clearing and ask them about the ashen-haired woman. When the old woman interrupts your conversation, work your way through the dialogue options, telling her that you're looking for someone.

Go to the hut and talk to the boy

To learn more about the mysterious Johnny, head inside the building to the south and speak to Travik - he's the boy standing by Gran. Once you've ask him where you can find Johnny, Gran interjects to bring the conversation to a close. You'll have to use a bit of cunning if you're going to get the information you need. You've two choices here: you can either attempt to lure Gran away yourself, or you can get help from the children outside.

Play hide-and-seek with the children

Ask the children in the swamp village about Johnny

If you opt for the latter method, head outside and talk to the group of children loitering by the hut. Work you way through the conversation options and ask them to help you out. Agree to play hide-and-seek to continue.

Find the hidden children using your Witcher Senses

When the children have disappeared, activate your Witcher Senses and start the hunt. Immediately look at the ground to locate a freshly-made trail of footsteps. Follow it along until you find the first child hiding inside the hut.

Go back outside and head east to the little bridge. Another set of footprints lies on the other side of the pond, so nip over and follow them around the side of the building. You can't climb the ladder, so walk around to the back of the hut and look for the pile of leaves on the porch. Talk to the girl hiding beneath them to continue.

From here, walk around the hut in a clockwise direction and locate the footprints leading south. Once you find them, immediately look right to find the next child hiding in a bush. Talk to her, then turn your attention back to the trail of footprints.

Follow them along and enter the building when you reach it. The footprints stop at the window inside, but you're too small to fit through. Go outside again and run around to the back of the hut to resume the trail. Follow it along until you reach the boy hiding by the water. Talk to him to bring the game of hide-and-seek to a close.

With Gran out of the way, speak to Travik again and ask him where you can find Johnny. When the conversation is over, leave the hut.

Find Johnny in the swamp

Look for Johnny in the swamp using your Witcher Senses

Back outside, head north-east in the direction of the objective marker until you reach the little meadow. Deal with the Drowners and Water Hag in the area before continuing.

Find Johnny's footprints

Next, activate your Witcher Senses and start scouring your surroundings for footprints. Examine them once you've found them.

Follow Johnny's footprints using your Witcher Senses

Johnny's footprints run around a little, then begin heading north-west. Follow them through the swamp until you run into another group of Drowners. Take them out, then continue tracking the footprints through the undergrowth. Eventually, you'll reach a small burrow.

Lure Johnny out of his burrow

Interact with the burrow to call Johnny out. Work your way through the (rather one-sided) conversation, then start following the godling through the swamp.

Follow Johnny

Continue forwards until you spy the group of Drowners roaming the clearing.

Kill the Drowners, Water Hags and Harpies

Defeat the monsters

Unsurprisingly, you'll need to defeat the creatures to proceed. Fight them in the usual way, but try and stay clear of the poisonous gas spewing from the swampy earth. Once the monsters are dead, rejoin your tiny charge.

Continue through the swamp until you reach the sheer rock face. When you're done talking to Johnny, you'll need to do a bit of climbing in order to complete your next objective.

Search the raven nest

Locate the stream directly ahead and begin following the small path running alongside it. A little way up the hill, you'll come to a small waterfall. Leap over the gap and continue along the dirt track. When the route splits, look to the left and make your way towards the small wooden platform. Hop on up and approach the nest on the cliff's edge nearby.

A group of harpies attack almost immediately. They're pretty weak, but stay vigilant as its easy to be overwhelmed if they drop down from the sky when your attention is elsewhere. When peace is restored, examine the nest to retrieve the sealed bottle and raven's feather.

Give the bottle to Johnny

Carefully make your way back down the hill and give the bottle to Johnny on your return. When the godling's voice is restored, work your way through the dialogue options and ask about the ashen-haired woman. Convince Johnny to speak to Gran, then end the conversation.

Follow Johnny to the swamp village

Next, follow the godling back through the swamp until you reach the village, dealing with any hostile creatures that you encounter along the way. Back at the village, ask Gran to lead you to the Crones when Johnny has finished his song.

Once you gain an audience with the Ladies, tell them that you have something to ask. Work through the dialogue options and agree to speak to the ealdorman of Downwarren.

Where to find the ealdorman

Talk to the ealdorman of Downwarren about the village's problems

Before continuing with your task, take a few moments to loot the building. When you're done, head outside. Next, summon Roach and make the journey north, following the objective marker towards your goal. Dismount your steed once you reach the small cluster of buildings halfway up the hill. The ealdorman is stood outside a hut and dressed in green - speak to him to continue. Work your way through the conversation options, then prepare for the next leg of your adventure.

Find out what's killing villagers from Downwarren

You won't find too much of interest in Downwarren, but feel free to browse the merchant's wares before continuing on your adventure. Stock up on food if you need it, then begin the journey south-east towards the Whispering Hillock.

A voice greets you as you near the area but pay it no heed. Instead, proceed up the hill until you reach the large, gnarled tree. Take care of any wolves roaming the area, then activate your Senses.

Find a passage leading under the hill using your Witcher Senses

With the tree behind you, begin heading north-west in the direction of the pulsating marker. Navigate the steep incline and engage the werewolf loitering around at the bottom. You need to finish the creature off quickly - once it starts glowing red, its health begins to replenish.

When the werewolf is defeated, locate the glowing yellow stone on the rocky ledge nearby and examine it to receive an Ability point, plus a temporary Igni Sign boost. Look left and locate another stone ledge smeared with white paint. Climb up, then head through the cave entrance, travelling deep into the earth towards the sound of the beating drum.

Explore the cave

A little way into the cave, the path splits in two. The route to the left is blocked by writhing tree roots, however, and there's no way through just yet. Instead, take the right-hand path and jump into the water. Dive beneath the surface and swim along the passage as it bends around to the left. At the end of the tunnel, resurface and climb onto dry land. Continue along the passage until you reach the beating heart of the tree.

Work your way through the dialogue options and ask the voice how it can be freed. Eventually, you'll be given a choice. Either offer to free the spirit of the tree or tell it that you don't believe its story. Dare to doubt it and the spirit summons its minions to attack you.

Option 1 - Doubt the spirit

Eliminate the first wave of Endrega Workers and immediately turn your attention to the roots protecting the heart of the tree. Slice through them with some heavy blows, then attack the heart when its defences are down. A second wave of Endrega Workers appears shortly so deal with them and turn your attention back to the tree. Once its health bar is depleted, the spirit is no more and the Ladies of the Wood quest resumes.

Option 2 - Offer to help

If you offer to free the spirit, you'll need to secure several items for a ritual - raven feathers, a horse, and the spirit's human remains. You should already have the raven feathers from your trip to the nest a little earlier on. That just leaves two more items to find. Wrap up the conversation and prepare to begin your impromptu treasure hunt.

Our Witcher 3 walkthrough and guide can help you with the main story, including the Wandering in the Dark and Family Matters missions, and eventually, one of several Witcher 3 endings . There's plenty of side content, too, including Witcher 3 Contracts , White Orchard quests , Velen quests , Novigrad quests and Skellige Isles quests . Elsewhere, learn about the best Witcher 3 builds , the best Witcher 3 mods , how to make money in Witcher 3 , find Places of Power locations , and learn how to do Witcher 3 crafting and Witcher 3 Alchemy And when you're done with all those - we can help you through expansions with our Hearts of Stone walkthrough and Blood and Wine walkthrough .

Secondary Quest: The Whispering Hillock

Find the bones of the spirit trapped beneath the Whispering Hillock using your Witcher Senses

Once you've activated the new quest (it's listed under Secondary Quests if you're struggling to locate it), leave the cave via the newly-opened passage to the north. Outside, begin heading west in the direction of the quest marker. Before long, you'll reach a small patch of swamp swarming with Drowners and a Water Hag. Take them all out, prioritising the Water Hag. This annoying creature can sink into the ground, bursting upward to deal damage from below.

When peace is finally restored, begin searching the area indicated on your mini-map. Use your Witcher Senses to locate the small unmarked grave, then loot the remains inside.

Calm a wild horse using the Axii Sign and mount it

Next, begin journeying south-east towards the objective marker. Several wild horses roam the area, so approach one slowly and, once it's been targeted, use your Axii Sign to bring it under control. Mount the horse to complete this portion of the quest.

Bring a black horse to the cave beneath the Whispering Hillock

When you're ready, head back to the Whispering Hillock and enter the cave. Return to the heart of the tree to begin the ritual. You'll be granted three choices next: two of them enable you to destroy the spirit while the third continues the ritual. Opt for the latter and you'll be left with a grateful, if slightly demonic-looking, horse. Sadly, you may have done more harm than good...

Tell the ealdorman of the Downwarren you took care of the problem

Leave the cave via the now-unblocked passage and look for the ealdorman outside. Talk to him and work your way through the dialogue options in order to receive your payment. When the old Crones reveal their true form, work your way through the dialogue options to learn more about Ciri's journey and to complete the quest.

- Our walkthrough continues with a step-by-step guide to completing The Witcher 3 - Escaping the Bog .

- Head back to the first page for the rest of our Witcher 3 walkthrough .

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The Witcher 3 guide: Ladies of the Wood walkthrough

Choices and consequences for the Ghost in the Tree in “Ladies of the Wood” and “The Whispering Hillock”

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The Witcher 3 ’s “Ladies of the Wood” is not a complicated quest on its own, but it ties into a couple other quests, and your choices have lasting impacts.

This guide is about the choices you make during “Ladies of the Wood” and the related “The Whispering Hillock” quest. We’ll help you understand what your options are and the consequences of your choice.

Ladies of the Wood walkthrough

During “Wandering in the Dark,” Keira gives Geralt a book titled Ladies of the Wood . Open your inventory and check the book to start this main story quest.

Progress through the quest by following your map waypoints and using your Witcher Sense. There’s nothing hidden or complex here, so just keep completing the objectives as they appear.

Continue until you’re asked to “ find out what’s killing villagers from Downwarren.”

Follow the waypoint, and you’ll end up with a new main quest, “The Whispering Hillock.”

The Whispering Hillock walkthrough

As you approach the hill(ock), use your Witcher Sense to find nearby enemies. You’ll have to deal with a Werewolf and some Wolves before you can proceed.

Visit the nearby Velen Place of Power , and boost your Igni Sign . Follow the ledge and climb into the cave beneath the hill.

Follow the cave, and swim under the water. When you surface, you’ll meet the Ghost in the Tree .

During your conversation, you’ll get the choice to either free ( “I’ll help you” ) or kill ( “I don’t believe you” ) the spirit.

We’ll explain each choice and their consequences below.

Answer 1: “I’ll help you” (Release the spirit)

If you choose to help the Ghost in the Tree, you’ll need three things to complete a ritual: raven feathers , the spirit’s remains (bones) , and a horse .

You already collected the Raven’s Feathers during the earlier part of “Ladies of the Wood” while helping Johnny. If you missed them, return to the crow’s nest where you retrieved his voice.

Find the bones of the spirit trapped beneath the Whispering Hillock using your Witcher Senses

Exit the cave and follow your map marker into the swamp. Deal with the Drowners and Water Hag you encounter. Use your Witcher Sense to look for a headstone on the south edge of the search area.

Calm a wild horse using the Axii Sign and mount it

Follow your map to the area indicated. Pull up the Axii Sign , and slowly approach the horses that appear. Hit it with Axii, and then mount it. Ride it back and into the cave.

Start the ritual

You have one last choice here to either go through with the ritual or kill the spirit. If you press on with the ritual, you’ll free the Ghost in the Tree.

Answer 2: “I don’t believe you” (Kill the spirit)

If you choose to kill the Ghost in the Tree, you’ll immediately start a fight and get the objective “ Destroy the heart in the tree’s roots.”

The tree will throw up a magical shield and summon several insect-like Endrega .

Handle the Endrega, and swing away at the Tree’s Heart when the shield drops. You’ll have to repeat that process a couple times.

Tell the ealdorman of Downwarren you took care of the problem

Whichever choice you made, the ealdorman of Downwarren will be nearby outside of the cave. Talk to him, and several scenes will happen in a row — you won’t have to walk anywhere.

You don’t have any more choices, so just navigate through the conversations to the end of “Ladies of the Wood.”

In the next section, we’ll talk about the consequences of the choice you make and give some guidance about which way you should go.

The difference between “I’ll help you” and “I don’t believe you”

Either choice you make will let you successfully complete “Ladies of the Wood.” However, your choice impacts a side quest called “Return to Crookback Bog” (which is itself another offshoot of “Family Matters” ) that happens later in the game.

[ Warning: There are spoilers for “Return to Crookback Bog” below.]

Free the spirit

If you chose to free the spirit, the town of Downwarren will be destroyed when you return later. Later, you will not be able to save the Baron’s wife, Anna. The Baron will not survive either.

Kill the spirit

If you chose to kill the Ghost in the Tree, the town of Downwarren will survive. You might be able to save the Baron’s wife during “Return to Crookback Bog,” and the Baron might also survive. Their survival depends on your choices during that side quest.

Which should you choose?

There’s no clean or tidy outcome for this quest, but the most generally positive solution is to kill the Ghost in the Tree. (There’s an in-game book titled “She Who Knows” that suggests the Ghost in the Tree is the mother of the Crones you meet in “Ladies of the Wood.” The book says that She-Who-Knows is insane and led to “Velen … drowning in blood.” So maybe she’s not worth freeing.)

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• The Whispering Hillock

The Whispering Hillock Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Quest

Suggested level: 5

Group: Secondary Quests

Location: Velen

This quest will appear in your journal when you travel near the Ancient Oak . You need to complete this quest to get information about Ciri from the crones in the Ladies of the Wood main quest. Your choice here will have a major impact on the Bloody Baron's family, fate of Downwarren's villagers, and the orphans in Crookback Bog.

Something about life in dreary backwoods settlements leads their inhabitants to hide the truth with misleading names. This takes the form of both hyperbole - a clump of bare trees called "Dragon Spike Forest" or a hole in the ground two paces deep named "The Chasm of Eternity" - and understatement - a horrid massacre calmly referred to as "the incident." Velen fit the mold in this regard, as Geralt learned while he wandered through it in search of Ciri. There he encountered a trio of highly suspicious magical sisters called the Ladies of the Wood, who directed him to a clump of bogside huts known as Downwarren. Geralt was to solve their "problem": a rash of mysterious murders. He spoke to the ealdorman and learned that the evil power behind the killings dwelled in the Whispering Hillock. Wherever else?

...or, if you visit a spirit trapped in a cave under the tree before you are required to do so in the Ladies of the Wood quest.

While roaming the thick, gloomy tangles of the Velen woodlands, Geralt came across a spirit whose heart was trapped in a cave under an eye-catching tree…

Related points of interest

Quest stages of The Whispering Hillock

1. find where the voice is coming from using your witcher senses..

Find the entrance to the Cave Beneath the Whispering Hillock . There is a werewolf (8) near the entrance that you can try to skip it, but it is best to kill it.

Enter the cave, and follow the flooded corridor to the largest cavern where you will find a large beating heart trapped between the roots of a tree.

2. Speak to the spirit in the cave beneath the Whispering Hillock.

Depending on whether you came here before you contacted the crones in the Ladies of the Wood quest or after you talked to them and the ealdorman of Downwarren, the dialogue options will be slightly different. In the latter case, you will be able to ask the spirit about the crones. Eventually, the imprisoned spirit will ask you to help him get free. You can agree to help him or decide to kill him.

3. (Optional) Release the Spirit.

If you agree to help the spirit, he will tell you to gather three items needed to perform a ritual that will set him free: the spirit's bones, a raven's feather, and a wild, black horse.

Note : An additional entrance to the cave will be opened.

3.1. Find the bones of the spirit trapped beneath the Whispering Hillock using your Witcher Senses.

To get the bones go to a place in the marshes marked on the map. Find a small grave and interact with it to get what you came here for.

3.2. Find a raven feather.

The feather can be found in the same Raven Nest where you can find a bottle for Johnny. So if you've done this part of the Ladies of the Wood quest, then you'll probably already have it. If you don't have it yet, just head to the nest and take it.

3.3. Calm a wild horse using the Axii Sign and mount it.

When you get the bones and the feather, then you can go towards the Crossroads signpost near which you should come across some black wild horses. Calm a wild horse using the Axii sign and then mount it.

3.4. Bring a black horse to the cave beneath the Whispering Hillock.

Go back to the cave and enter through the entrance that opened after talking to the spirit.

You can start the ritual to free the spirit. As a result of the ritual, the spirit will transfer to the horse, becoming Black Beauty.

You can also change your mind and trick the spirit or kill it. If you choose to trick the spirit, then you will start the ritual but then refuse to finish it, letting the spirit to die without a fight. If you decide to kill it then the fight will start.

The truth hidden under the Whispering Hillock? A woman's spirit, imprisoned in a cave within it. Geralt felt sympathy for the ill-treated ghost and helped it enter the body of a horse, thus regaining its freedom.

Freeing the spirit will have the following consequences:

• The children from the orphanage will be saved and can later be found in Novigrad where Marabella will take care of them.
• Anna will be punished by crones and turned into a water hag. When Geralt removes the curse, it will cause her death. Her husband will commit suicide in grief.
• The spirit will attack the village of Downwarren and kill most of the villagers.

4. (Optional) Destroy the heart in the tree's roots.

If you choose not to free the spirit, you will have to destroy the heart in the cave. During the fight, the spirit will summon endreka workers to defend it. Kill them as quickly as possible and then attack the roots protecting the heart and heart itself.

The truth hidden under the Whispering Hillock? A woman's spirit, imprisoned in a cave within it. Geralt concluded this foul being was responsible for murdering the inhabitants of Downwarren, and so destroyed its heart, loosening its last grasp on our world.

Killing a spirit will have the following consequences:

• The orphans will be taken by the crones.
• Anna will go crazy at the loss of the children and her husband will take her out of the marshes to seek her rescue.
• The villagers of Downwarren are safe.

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The Witcher 3: Ladies Of The Wood Main Quest Walkthrough

The Ladies of the Wood is a long one, especially for how early into The Witcher 3 it occurs. If you need help navigating it, we're here.

Quick Links

The trail of treats, hide and seek, here's johnny, the harpies and wyvern, the crones' request, battling the werewolf.

The Witcher 3 has many amazing quests, but one of the most beloved is 'Ladies of the Wood'. In this one, Geralt travels to Crookback Bog to find the witches who live there in the hopes they have information about Ciri's whereabouts.

RELATED: The Witcher 3: A Guide To Every Possible Romance

Compelling characters, an intriguing narrative, and exciting battles; the quest has everything that makes The Witcher 3 so great. It's not just an enjoyable part of the game either, it's also vital to the game's story as a whole. Unfortunately, the quest isn't so easy, especially as it occurs early in the campaign before players have fully got to grips with the game. This guide can help those who need extra help.

Updated on December 11, 2022 by Quinton O'Connor: We've added a few more screenshots and brushed up our instructions here and there. From hide-and-seek to a vicious werewolf, this guide's step-by-step style should do you well!

The first action Geralt needs to take on this quest is to read the book that Keira gave him titled "The Ladies of the Wood." It is found in the quest items section of the inventory.

Once read, players can go to the objective marker that's not too far from Downwarren. While there, Geralt has to examine a wooden shrine, which signifies the starting point of the Trail of Treats.

Using his Witcher senses, Geralt can easily follow the trail as the treats all glow red.

At the end of it, Geralt meets a bunch of kids who he engages in conversation. As soon as the name Johnny is mentioned, they are interrupted by a woman. Her name is revealed to be Gran, and she takes the boy who knows Johnny away. Players then must go to talk with the boy, but Gran stands in the way.

To get to the boy, the Witcher needs help from the other kids. Talking with them gives players two ways to earn their assistance. Geralt can either join them in a game of hide-and-seek or give them some treats.

The treats option is easy as you only have to ask if they want anything other than to play, and Geralt hands over the sweets. Playing hide-and-seek takes a bit more effort. But you can just use their Witcher senses to follow each of the kids' footsteps to find them. Geralt's no fun at all, eh?

After Geralt has given them treats or played hide and seek, the kids hold up their end of the deal. One of them distracts Gran long enough that Geralt can talk to the boy who knows about Johnny.

During the conversation, the kid explains that Johnny once mentioned an ashen haired girl (Ciri) that he saw in the swamp. And the boy goes on to divulge Johnny's location.

RELATED: The Witcher 3: Little Red Side Quest Walkthrough

You are then given a nearby marker on the map where Johnny can be found. Waiting at the marker is two drowners and a water hag.

After slicing through the monsters, Geralt needs to use his Witcher senses to find and follow Johnny's footsteps. You might run into more drowners at this point, but they shouldn't be too hard to take down. Following the tracks will lead Geralt to a borrow where he finds the silent Johnny.

It doesn't take long for Geralt to figure out that Johnny is a godling and that he's silent because he's lost his voice. The Witcher agrees to help him regain his ability to speak.

To get things underway, follow Johnny through the swamp. Unfortunately, the godling runs straight into some drowners. The battle isn't too difficult - just make sure to avoid the nearby beehive and poisonous gas. Once the drowners are dead, follow Johnny again.

The godling leads Geralt to the bottom of a cliff and indicates that the cure for his silence can be found at the top of it.

Things are seldom so cut and dry, of course, so naturally three harpies — and possibly a wyvern — will get in the way. If thewWyvern is present, it's a significantly harder fight. Using Aard or Igni to knock down the harpies should allow you to land a finishing blow to wipe them out quickly. For the wyvern, it's important to be patient and wait for the best opportunities to strike. Ranged options work wonders here.

After dealing with the monsters, search the raven's nest that's marked on the map to find a sealed bottle.

RELATED: The Witcher 3: Every Blacksmith Location

With the bottle in hand, players can make their way back down the cliff to give it to Johnny. This gives the godling his voice back. The now very talkative creature explains that the ashen-haired woman he saw went towards the orphanage - the one Geralt visited right before meeting the godling.

As Gran doesn't talk to strangers, Johnny says he'll speak with her on Geralt's behalf. The journey will likely involve bumping into a few drowners and a water hag, so don't let your mind wander too far mid-saunter.

Back at the orphanage, Johnny convinces Gran to let Geralt talk to the mysterious ladies who may know more about Ciri's whereabouts. The ladies task the Witcher with destroying a beast in Downwarren in exchange for the information he needs.

Consult your map for Downwarren's location if necessary. Once you're there, speak with the ealdorman , who will point you in yet another new direction: southbound to Ancient Oak .

Around the side here, there is a cave entrance next to a Place of Power . They should both be marked on the map either with their identifying symbols or as question marks. Guarding them, though, is a dangerous werewolf .

A lot of people have trouble killing the werewolf because of its ability to regenerate. Items that can help a lot in the fight are the thunderbolt potion, cursed oil, and moondust bombs.

There is no simple tactic to defeat the creature. But it's best to spam fast attacks and use Quen regularly to avoid taking a lot of damage . During the moments where the monster runs off to heal, Axii or grapeshot bombs can be used to disturb it . Players struggling with the battle can try to avoid it altogether. Going up the hill behind the monster is a particularly effective way to bypass the conflict.

From here, 'The Whispering Hillock' begins, effectively placing 'Ladies of the Wood' on hold until it's finished. From hereon out, 'Ladies of the Wood' is almost entirely cutscene-focused, Speak with the ealdorman again, and enjoy what comes thereafter.

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Notable people [ ], associated quests [ ].

• Ladies of the Wood
• Return to Crookback Bog
• The Whispering Hillock
• In early gameplay videos, the village is shown to be plagued by some sort of evil spirit which visits the villagers in their nightmares, causing them to sleepwalk into the nearby woods, to the Whispering Hillock .
• Depending on the player's actions during The Whispering Hillock, this village can be razed to the ground, in which all the inhabitants, apart from the ealdorman, will be killed. If returned to later, the destroyed town will be haunted by wraiths .
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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - "Downwarren" Gameplay

Published 2014-08-14 08:59 by Hilbert Hagedoorn

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CD Projekt RED has just released another teaser gameplay trailer for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. This teaser lasts 6 minutes and gives us a glimpse at Geralt helping villagers to solve the mystery of the Whispering Hillock and finding out what's killing them from Downwarren 

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Downwarren  is a  Location  in The Witcher 3 . The  Downwarren  is found in Velen . Downwarren is located south of  Reardon Manor  and north of  Ruined Tower . Locations are frequently risky and rewarding, or they could provide a safe sanctuary for a traveling Witcher.

All NPCs and Merchants in Downwarren

Related quests in downwarren.

• Contract Swamp Thing
• The Ladies of the Wood
• Whispering Hillock

All Items in Witcher 3's Downwarren

Consumable items.

• There are no Consumables in this location.

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• There are no Quest items in this location.
• There are no Equipment items in this location.

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• There are no Crafting items in this location.

Witcher 3 Downwarren Creatures, Enemies, and Bosses

Regular creatures and enemies.

• There are no enemies in this location.
• There are no Bosses in this location.

Witcher 3 Downwarren Other Notes and Tips

• Other notes for Downwarren go here.

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Jessica Grose

Loneliness is a problem that a.i. won’t solve.

By Jessica Grose

Opinion Writer

When I was reporting my ed tech series , I stumbled on one of the most disturbing things I’ve read in years about how technology might interfere with human connection: an article on the website of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz cheerfully headlined “ It’s Not a Computer, It’s a Companion! ”

It opens with this quote from someone who has apparently fully embraced the idea of having a chatbot for a significant other: “The great thing about A.I. is that it is constantly evolving. One day it will be better than a real [girlfriend]. One day, the real one will be the inferior choice.” The article goes on to breathlessly outline use cases for “A.I. companions,” suggesting that some future iteration of chatbots could stand in for mental health professionals, relationship coaches or chatty co-workers.

This week, OpenAI released an update to its ChatGPT chatbot, an indication that the inhuman future foretold by the Andreessen Horowitz story is fast approaching. According to The Washington Post, “The new model, called GPT-4o (“o” stands for “omni”), can interpret user instructions delivered via text, audio and image — and respond in all three modes as well.” GPT-4o is meant to encourage people to speak to it rather than type into it, The Post reports , as “The updated voice can mimic a wider range of human emotions, and allows the user to interrupt. It chatted with users with fewer delays, and identified an OpenAI executive’s emotion based on a video chat where he was grinning.”

There have been lots of comparisons between GPT-4o and the 2013 movie “Her,” in which a man falls in love with his A.I. assistant, voiced by Scarlett Johansson. While some observers, including the Times Opinion contributing writer Julia Angwin, who called ChatGPT’s recent update “ rather routine ,” weren’t particularly impressed, there’s been plenty of hype about the potential for humanlike chatbots to ameliorate emotional challenges, particularly loneliness and social isolation.

For example, in January, the co-founder of one A.I. company argued that the technology could improve quality of life for isolated older people, writing , “Companionship can be provided in the form of virtual assistants or chatbots, and these companions can engage in conversations, play games or provide information, helping to alleviate feelings of loneliness and boredom.”

Certainly, there are valuable and beneficial uses for A.I. chatbots — they can be life-changing for people who are visually impaired , for example. But the notion that bots will one day be an adequate substitute for human contact misunderstands what loneliness really is, and doesn’t account for the necessity of human touch.

There are disagreements among academics about the precise meaning of “loneliness,” but to come at it as a social problem, it’s worth trying to sharpen our definitions. Eric Klinenberg , a sociologist at New York University and the author of several books about social connectedness, including “Going Solo” and “Palaces for the People,” described the complexity of loneliness to me this way: “I think of loneliness as our bodies’ signal to us that we need better, more satisfying connections with other people.” And, he said, “the major issue I have with loneliness metrics is they often fail to distinguish between the ordinary healthy loneliness, which gets us off our couch and into the social world when we need it, and the chronic dangerous loneliness, which prevents us from getting off our couch, and spirals and leads us to spiral into depression and withdrawal.”

Why I worry about chatting with bots as a potential solution to loneliness is that it could be an approach that blunts the feeling just enough that it discourages or even prevents people from taking that step off the couch toward making connections with others. And some research indicates that a lack of human touch can exacerbate feelings of isolation. One 2023 paper by researchers at the University of Stirling expresses this more holistic view of loneliness quite eloquently, describing the emotion as “an embodied and contextualized sensory experience.”

Nick Gray, a co-author of that paper — which is about the effect of simulated versus real touch on feelings of loneliness — told me that he hasn’t seen any research yet on how realistic A.I. chatbots affect loneliness, noting that it is, obviously, a very new technology. But based on previous research in the field, including his own, he says “a realistic A.I. chatbot could give a temporary reprieve of the feelings of loneliness,” but “it’s a stretch to say it will reduce or get rid of loneliness.”

Klinenberg pointed out that we just had a natural experiment in forced isolation with the Covid-19 pandemic, and the results were quite clear: People, particularly people who lived alone, longed for human interaction. “If I told you that it’s a new pandemic that will hit this summer and we’ll all spend the next year alone or at home with our family, with everything in the public realm shut down, I don’t think the fact of A.I. would make us feel relieved,” he said, adding, “I think the prospect of a world without face-to-face interaction and human touch is terrifying.” He also noted that some of the companies that are pouring money into developing A.I. are among those that put ( unpopular ) return-to-office mandates into effect, so they certainly believe in the value of human interaction on some level.

I was struck by this passage in a story titled “Could A.I.-Powered Robot ‘Companions’ Combat Human Loneliness?” about work that researchers at Auckland, Duke and Cornell Universities are conducting with robots used as a means to try to help alleviate loneliness in older people:

“Right now, all the evidence points to having a real friend as the best solution,” said Murali Doraiswamy, M.B.B.S., F.R.C.P., professor of psychiatry and geriatrics at Duke University and member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. “But until society prioritizes social connectedness and elder care, robots are a solution for the millions of isolated people who have no other solutions.”

What if even a tiny portion of the billions being spent developing A.I. chatbots could be spent on human and physical things we already know help loneliness? As Klinenberg put it, to help lonely and isolated people, we should be investing in things like collaborative housing, parks, libraries and other kinds of accessible social infrastructures that can help people of all ages build connectedness.

“The real social challenge and policy challenge and human challenge is for us to find ways to recognize these people and to attend to them, to care for them,” Klinenberg said. “But I also know that’s very hard work, and collectively we have failed to rise to that challenge.” We don’t want to spend the money or the time to support the most vulnerable among us. “In a way,” he added, “it’s our social failure that has created this opportunity for A.I. and technology to fill in the void.”

Jessica Grose is an Opinion writer for The Times, covering family, religion, education, culture and the way we live now.

Facility for Rare Isotope Beams

At michigan state university, international research team uses wavefunction matching to solve quantum many-body problems, new approach makes calculations with realistic interactions possible.

FRIB researchers are part of an international research team solving challenging computational problems in quantum physics using a new method called wavefunction matching. The new approach has applications to fields such as nuclear physics, where it is enabling theoretical calculations of atomic nuclei that were previously not possible. The details are published in Nature (“Wavefunction matching for solving quantum many-body problems”) .

Ab initio methods and their computational challenges

An ab initio method describes a complex system by starting from a description of its elementary components and their interactions. For the case of nuclear physics, the elementary components are protons and neutrons. Some key questions that ab initio calculations can help address are the binding energies and properties of atomic nuclei not yet observed and linking nuclear structure to the underlying interactions among protons and neutrons.

Yet, some ab initio methods struggle to produce reliable calculations for systems with complex interactions. One such method is quantum Monte Carlo simulations. In quantum Monte Carlo simulations, quantities are computed using random or stochastic processes. While quantum Monte Carlo simulations can be efficient and powerful, they have a significant weakness: the sign problem. The sign problem develops when positive and negative weight contributions cancel each other out. This cancellation results in inaccurate final predictions. It is often the case that quantum Monte Carlo simulations can be performed for an approximate or simplified interaction, but the corresponding simulations for realistic interactions produce severe sign problems and are therefore not possible.

Using ‘plastic surgery’ to make calculations possible

The new wavefunction-matching approach is designed to solve such computational problems. The research team—from Gaziantep Islam Science and Technology University in Turkey; University of Bonn, Ruhr University Bochum, and Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany; Institute for Basic Science in South Korea; South China Normal University, Sun Yat-Sen University, and Graduate School of China Academy of Engineering Physics in China; Tbilisi State University in Georgia; CEA Paris-Saclay and Université Paris-Saclay in France; and Mississippi State University and the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) at Michigan State University (MSU)—includes  Dean Lee , professor of physics at FRIB and in MSU’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and head of the Theoretical Nuclear Science department at FRIB, and  Yuan-Zhuo Ma , postdoctoral research associate at FRIB.

“We are often faced with the situation that we can perform calculations using a simple approximate interaction, but realistic high-fidelity interactions cause severe computational problems,” said Lee. “Wavefunction matching solves this problem by doing plastic surgery. It removes the short-distance part of the high-fidelity interaction, and replaces it with the short-distance part of an easily computable interaction.”

This transformation is done in a way that preserves all of the important properties of the original realistic interaction. Since the new wavefunctions look similar to that of the easily computable interaction, researchers can now perform calculations using the easily computable interaction and apply a standard procedure for handling small corrections called perturbation theory.  A team effort

The research team applied this new method to lattice quantum Monte Carlo simulations for light nuclei, medium-mass nuclei, neutron matter, and nuclear matter. Using precise ab initio calculations, the results closely matched real-world data on nuclear properties such as size, structure, and binding energies. Calculations that were once impossible due to the sign problem can now be performed using wavefunction matching.

“It is a fantastic project and an excellent opportunity to work with the brightest nuclear scientist s in FRIB and around the globe,” said Ma. “As a theorist , I'm also very excited about programming and conducting research on the world's most powerful exascale supercomputers, such as Frontier , which allows us to implement wavefunction matching to explore the mysteries of nuclear physics.”

While the research team focused solely on quantum Monte Carlo simulations, wavefunction matching should be useful for many different ab initio approaches, including both classical and  quantum computing calculations. The researchers at FRIB worked with collaborators at institutions in China, France, Germany, South Korea, Turkey, and United States.

“The work is the culmination of effort over many years to handle the computational problems associated with realistic high-fidelity nuclear interactions,” said Lee. “It is very satisfying to see that the computational problems are cleanly resolved with this new approach. We are grateful to all of the collaboration members who contributed to this project, in particular, the lead author, Serdar Elhatisari.”

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the German Research Foundation, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences President’s International Fellowship Initiative, Volkswagen Stiftung, the European Research Council, the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Security Academic Fund, the Rare Isotope Science Project of the Institute for Basic Science, the National Research Foundation of Korea, the Institute for Basic Science, and the Espace de Structure et de réactions Nucléaires Théorique.

Michigan State University operates the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) as a user facility for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science (DOE-SC), supporting the mission of the DOE-SC Office of Nuclear Physics. Hosting what is designed to be the most powerful heavy-ion accelerator, FRIB enables scientists to make discoveries about the properties of rare isotopes in order to better understand the physics of nuclei, nuclear astrophysics, fundamental interactions, and applications for society, including in medicine, homeland security, and industry.

The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of today’s most pressing challenges. For more information, visit energy.gov/science.

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‘you can solve anything’.

Priyanka Pillai wants to take on big problems — and has learned how good design can help

Christina Pazzanese

Harvard Staff Writer

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Part of the Commencement 2024 series

A collection of stories covering Harvard University’s 373rd Commencement.

Growing up in India, Priyanka Pillai witnessed the immense and varied struggles many impoverished people faced in their daily lives, such as getting prenatal care and protecting children from labor exploitation.

As an undergraduate in Bangalore studying industrial design, she wondered whether good design could help ease at least parts of these and other challenges. She came to Harvard Graduate School of Design two years ago and got her answer, discovering she could take on big problems “that you don’t even realize … could be tackled with design.”

Pillai wanted to do something to help address the refugee crisis in Uganda for her independent design engineering project. Those projects span two semesters and call for students seeking a master’s in design engineering (a joint GSD and John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences program) to identify complex, real-world problems and develop solution prototypes.

“For the first time, I truly felt like I was doing work that was very in touch with what GSD wants people to do, which is working with communities.”

Conducting fieldwork in Uganda, Pillai saw the difficulties that South Sudanese refugees were having reuniting with their families. The plight of those fleeing the ongoing civil war in the northeast African nation has become one of the largest refugee crises in the world, with more than half a million living in Uganda alone, mostly in camps.

More than 60 percent are children separated from parents who are looking for them, Pillai said, and need multiple layers of support. While non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are providing some assistance, much more help is needed.

“One thing that really stood out was agency. There’s currently a lack of agency when it comes to finding their family members on their own,” said Pillai, who graduates later this month. Many refugees use informal, ad hoc methods such as phone calls, WhatsApp, and photo sharing to try to find relatives.

“The second part, which is extremely critical, is that we need to move from a Western-centric way of finding a family member,” such as cataloguing names, ages, and date of separation done by NGOs, because it doesn’t capture vernacularor local geography, vital details that may speed up reunification, she said, noting that learning more about how to design for “the Indian context” and the Global South more generally was a key reason she came to Harvard.

“A lot of cultural nuances were missing in connection to the data to find missing family members,” she said. “And that’s the kind of solution that we’re moving toward.”

Given the ubiquity of cellphones there, Pillai and classmate Julius Stein designed and built an online platform for refugees to enter information about themselves using text, photos, and audio. The platform generates a series of questions that can lead to possible matches while minimizing the risk of exploitation by malign actors.

“For the first time, I truly felt like I was doing work that was very in touch with what GSD wants people to do, which is working with communities,” she said. “It was just a life-changing experience.”

Earlier this month, one startup Pillai is involved in, Alba, won an Ingenuity Award as part of the Harvard President’s Innovation Challenge. The team designed a special wipe so the visually impaired can better detect when their menstrual period has begun without relying on outside assistance.

In 2023, Pillai was part of a student project that won gold in the Spark International Design awards. The design team created Felt, a haptic armband that turns sound and visual clues into movement. The device assists people who are deaf blind to independently catch emotional nuances or subtexts in conversations, which often get lost in Braille or other translations.

During her time in the program, Pillai also jumped at the opportunity to take courses at the Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Graduate School of Education to learn more about things such as accessibility, ethical design, and negotiation.

“I knew that I was limiting myself because I didn’t know all these different things,” she said.

When not focused on her own studies, Pillai has been a teaching fellow for a design studio at GSD and at SEAS for a course led by her IDEP adviser, Krzysztof Gajos, Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science.

“I love teaching,” she said. “It’s one of my favorite experiences.”

Reflecting on her time at GSD, Pillai has been deeply inspired by the faculty and her fellow students. This group from many different backgrounds with different interests and perspectives, working in many different disciplines, has been like a “dream” design studio where she’s been able to share and borrow ideas and practices from others and see how other fields look at things such as collaboration, sustainability and accessibility. It has been intellectually liberating to experience such fearlessness, she said, after years of feeling so “constrained” in her prior practice, which had been “rooted in ‘realistic goals.’”

“People tackling very huge issues that you don’t even realize 1) is a problem that could be tackled with design, and 2), they’re almost your age and they’re doing it somehow. That was very important to see,” she said.

“People really think that you can solve anything.”

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Rehoming wild horses won't solve the brumby problem, but it transforms lives for horses and owners

At 14, Ruby Wild would rather demonstrate her connection with horses than explain it.

Whether she's prompting the more than 500-kilogram animal to lie down or waiting for the mare to be still enough to stand on her back, the bond between the teenager and her horses is undeniable.

"If you don't have a strong connection, it's hard to do anything," Ruby said.

But her herd of four aren't regular domestic horses, they were once wild brumbies.

"We grew up together because she was only little. She was only two when we got her," she said.

Her mum Kylie Wild said, while Ruby was supervised, her young daughter had a natural intuition with horses.

"Ruby and Gidget built this connection together and it never really crossed my mind that she was a wild brumby," Ms Wild said.

Ruby's love of brumbies is one she shares with her cousin, 17-year-old Brooke Wild.

"Brumbies, they're definitely underestimated, that's for sure," Brooke said.

"Brumbies are just so, so versatile, anything you put them to: jumps, cattle, whatever. They'll just pick it up like that and they just learn so quickly."

Where did brumbies come from?

Horses came to Australia on the First Fleet in 1788. Escaped animals become the country's first brumbies.

Over time, other domestic breeds have gone feral and now descendants of thoroughbreds, stock, quarter and heavy horses can be found in the wild.

It is estimated there are more than 400,000 brumbies in Australia and when concentrated in high numbers, their hard hooves pose a risk to the environment and native species.

Horse trainer Anna Uhrig runs a brumby rehoming camp in south-east Queensland, using horses trapped in local forests and from central Queensland.

"We can't solve the brumby problem but we're doing what we can," Ms Uhrig said.

"It's a very small part of the puzzle: the amount of horses we rehome. It's not thousands but I think the work adds quality of life to those horses."

Ecologist Dave Berman has been managing brumby populations for 40 years across the country.

For most of the past decade, he has managed the brumby herds of Tuan and Toolara state forests, which consist of pine plantations and native species north of Noosa.

The growing population has brought wild horses close to roads, putting drivers at risk.

"We catch them and find homes for them to reduce the risk of collisions between horses and people," Dr Berman said.

"Usually it's the horses that get killed, but eventually, you know, there will be people killed.

"Originally in about 2009 there were about four horses killed per year, we removed all the horses regularly crossing the road and then there were no collisions, so we showed that worked."

What's a brumby rehoming camp?

Ms Uhrig's 10-day intensive camp attracts participants from all over the country to choose, train and adopt a brumby.

"Yarding, drafting and then coming to these yards is totally new for the brumbies so it can be quite scary for them," Ms Uhrig said.

In less than two weeks, some of the horses go from not letting a human within 100 metres to being ridden.

"I just love seeing the transformation and I love giving people the opportunity to learn those skills," Ms Uhrig said.

"I could break in a brumby continuously and I still wouldn't be able to rehome as many as we can through the camps."

Melissa Teunis's brumby Valour will join her herd of domestic horses used for equine therapy.

"I've loved horses forever and I just wanted the opportunity to start [training] my own [horse]," she said. 

"It's the perfect place to come. Anna is amazing and just knows the process and talks and walks you through every step."

But Ms Uhrig said rehoming brumbies wouldn't work everywhere.

"In terms of the whole management debate, it's not a closed book. We don't have the answers necessarily," Ms Uhrig said.

"There's been some research done in some targeted areas and we think we have the answers and we can apply those but generally it's a nationwide issue and the management implications are different in each area."

How are the horses trapped?

Dr Berman said   the trapping process was slow and targeted brumbies who grazed near or regularly crossed roads.

"We use electric fences and we build a really large electric fence area that can be up to 4 kilometres long," he said.

"We'll build that around the horses and gradually make it smaller and then get them into a laneway and then into hessian panels, and then into panel yards."

He said patience and a respect for the animals were required.

"If you put too much pressure on, they go. They'll go through the fence anyway," he said.

Giving the horses a second chance can take weeks and sometimes months.

It's an emotional process for Dr Berman who creates a strong connection with the brumbies during the process.

"They're wonderful animals," he said.

A national problem

Brumby management differs across the country.

Dr Berman said rehoming was becoming more common, but wasn't the solution alone.

"In a lot of other parts of Australia where populations are getting too much, horses can be shot from the air or the ground," he said.

In New South Wales's largest national park, Kosciuszko, the government is culling horses in the hundreds . 

In 2022, the NSW government estimated about 18,000 horses lived in the park, with a population range between 14,501 and 23,535 horses .

Under the state government management plan, more than 15,000 brumbies could be killed or rehomed to reduce the population to 3,000 by mid-2027, to the despair of some of the locals.

Meanwhile, a Kosciuszko brumby rehoming program has been suspended  after hundreds of horse carcasses were found on a property near Wagga Wagga .

Further north in NSW, the officers from the Local Land Services have a different approach, working with landholders and rescue groups to trap and rehome wild horses near Grafton.

"It's not just about safety for people. It's the safety of the horses as a number of them have been hit on the road," senior biosecurity officer Tiffany Felton said.

"But it's not just that, they're a hard-hoofed animals so they do, and especially in these dry times, start affecting the waterways and in environmentally sensitive areas."

In the past three years more than 130 have been captured and rehomed under the state government's Biosecurity Act.

"Previously, there have been probably far harsher approaches to wild horse management, and that's not what the community wanted," said Louise Orr of North Coast Local Land Services.

Untapped potential

After just seven days at brumby camp, some of the horses are almost unrecognisable for participants, including Melissa Teunis.

"It's amazing to think that when we got here last Friday, he'd never been touched," Ms Teunis said.

"It shows you how resilient they are and just how willing — oh this will make me cry — how willing they are to try for us and, and give us all that they have."

Lilly Anderson, 14, could put a saddle on her horse Rain by day four of the course and three days later, she was able to ride the animal.

"Like, for me, that's incredible. That's like just gone so quickly. But she's also so just amazing," Lilly said.

The camp is the first stage of the horses transitioning to domestic life with more time and effort required after they leave.

"Once you give them a chance, they'll do anything for you," Lilly said. 

"She's just so smart to catch on and she'll do anything for lucerne as well. Loves a bit of food."

Past participants of the camp said the biggest challenge with rehoming a brumby was fighting off the temptation to buy another.

"It's been hard but it gets better. The highs are really high," Ava Cloherty said.

Watch ABC TV's Landline at 12:30pm on Sunday or on  ABC iview .

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Teens come up with trigonometry proof for Pythagorean Theorem, a problem that stumped math world for centuries

By Bill Whitaker

May 5, 2024 / 7:00 PM EDT / CBS News

As the school year ends, many students will be only too happy to see math classes in their rearview mirrors. It may seem to some of us non-mathematicians that geometry and trigonometry were created by the Greeks as a form of torture, so imagine our amazement when we heard two high school seniors had proved a mathematical puzzle that was thought to be impossible for 2,000 years. 

We met Calcea Johnson and Ne'Kiya Jackson at their all-girls Catholic high school in New Orleans. We expected to find two mathematical prodigies.

Instead, we found at St. Mary's Academy , all students are told their possibilities are boundless.

Come Mardi Gras season, New Orleans is alive with colorful parades, replete with floats, and beads, and high school marching bands.

In a city where uniqueness is celebrated, St. Mary's stands out – with young African American women playing trombones and tubas, twirling batons and dancing - doing it all, which defines St. Mary's, students told us.

Junior Christina Blazio says the school instills in them they have the ability to accomplish anything. 

Christina Blazio: That is kinda a standard here. So we aim very high - like, our aim is excellence for all students. 

The private Catholic elementary and high school sits behind the Sisters of the Holy Family Convent in New Orleans East. The academy was started by an African American nun for young Black women just after the Civil War. The church still supports the school with the help of alumni.

In December 2022, seniors Ne'Kiya Jackson and Calcea Johnson were working on a school-wide math contest that came with a cash prize.

Ne'Kiya Jackson: I was motivated because there was a monetary incentive.

Calcea Johnson: 'Cause I was like, "$500 is a lot of money. So I-- I would like to at least try."

Both were staring down the thorny bonus question.

Bill Whitaker: So tell me, what was this bonus question?

Calcea Johnson: It was to create a new proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. And it kind of gave you a few guidelines on how would you start a proof.

The seniors were familiar with the Pythagorean Theorem, a fundamental principle of geometry. You may remember it from high school: a² + b² = c². In plain English, when you know the length of two sides of a right triangle, you can figure out the length of the third.

Both had studied geometry and some trigonometry, and both told us math was not easy. What no one told  them  was there had been more than 300 documented proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem using algebra and geometry, but for 2,000 years a proof using trigonometry was thought to be impossible, … and that was the bonus question facing them.

Bill Whitaker: When you looked at the question did you think, "Boy, this is hard"?

Ne'Kiya Jackson: Yeah. 

Bill Whitaker: What motivated you to say, "Well, I'm going to try this"?

Calcea Johnson: I think I was like, "I started something. I need to finish it." 

Bill Whitaker: So you just kept on going.

Calcea Johnson: Yeah.

For two months that winter, they spent almost all their free time working on the proof.

CeCe Johnson: She was like, "Mom, this is a little bit too much."

CeCe and Cal Johnson are Calcea's parents.

CeCe Johnson:   So then I started looking at what she really was doing. And it was pages and pages and pages of, like, over 20 or 30 pages for this one problem.

Cal Johnson: Yeah, the garbage can was full of papers, which she would, you know, work out the problems and-- if that didn't work she would ball it up, throw it in the trash. 

Bill Whitaker: Did you look at the problem? 

Neliska Jackson is Ne'Kiya's mother.

Neliska Jackson: Personally I did not. 'Cause most of the time I don't understand what she's doing (laughter).

Michelle Blouin Williams: What if we did this, what if I write this? Does this help? ax² plus ….

Their math teacher, Michelle Blouin Williams, initiated the math contest.

Bill Whitaker: And did you think anyone would solve it?

Michelle Blouin Williams: Well, I wasn't necessarily looking for a solve. So, no, I didn't—

Bill Whitaker: What were you looking for?

Michelle Blouin Williams: I was just looking for some ingenuity, you know—

Calcea and Ne'Kiya delivered on that! They tried to explain their groundbreaking work to 60 Minutes. Calcea's proof is appropriately titled the Waffle Cone.

Calcea Johnson: So to start the proof, we start with just a regular right triangle where the angle in the corner is 90°. And the two angles are alpha and beta.

Bill Whitaker: Uh-huh

Calcea Johnson: So then what we do next is we draw a second congruent, which means they're equal in size. But then we start creating similar but smaller right triangles going in a pattern like this. And then it continues for infinity. And eventually it creates this larger waffle cone shape.

Calcea Johnson: Am I going a little too—

Bill Whitaker: You've been beyond me since the beginning. (laughter) 

Bill Whitaker: So how did you figure out the proof?

Ne'Kiya Jackson: Okay. So you have a right triangle, 90° angle, alpha and beta.

Bill Whitaker: Then what did you do?

Ne'Kiya Jackson: Okay, I have a right triangle inside of the circle. And I have a perpendicular bisector at OP to divide the triangle to make that small right triangle. And that's basically what I used for the proof. That's the proof.

Bill Whitaker: That's what I call amazing.

Ne'Kiya Jackson: Well, thank you.

There had been one other documented proof of the theorem using trigonometry by mathematician Jason Zimba in 2009 – one in 2,000 years. Now it seems Ne'Kiya and Calcea have joined perhaps the most exclusive club in mathematics. 

Bill Whitaker: So you both independently came up with proof that only used trigonometry.

Ne'Kiya Jackson: Yes.

Bill Whitaker: So are you math geniuses?

Calcea Johnson: I think that's a stretch. 

Bill Whitaker: If not genius, you're really smart at math.

Ne'Kiya Jackson: Not at all. (laugh) 

To document Calcea and Ne'Kiya's work, math teachers at St. Mary's submitted their proofs to an American Mathematical Society conference in Atlanta in March 2023.

Ne'Kiya Jackson: Well, our teacher approached us and was like, "Hey, you might be able to actually present this," I was like, "Are you joking?" But she wasn't. So we went. I got up there. We presented and it went well, and it blew up.

Bill Whitaker: It blew up.

Calcea Johnson: Yeah. 

Ne'Kiya Jackson: It blew up.

Bill Whitaker: Yeah. What was the blowup like?

Calcea Johnson: Insane, unexpected, crazy, honestly.

It took millenia to prove, but just a minute for word of their accomplishment to go around the world. They got a write-up in South Korea and a shout-out from former first lady Michelle Obama, a commendation from the governor and keys to the city of New Orleans. 

Bill Whitaker: Why do you think so many people found what you did to be so impressive?

Ne'Kiya Jackson: Probably because we're African American, one. And we're also women. So I think-- oh, and our age. Of course our ages probably played a big part.

Bill Whitaker: So you think people were surprised that young African American women, could do such a thing?

Calcea Johnson: Yeah, definitely.

Ne'Kiya Jackson: I'd like to actually be celebrated for what it is. Like, it's a great mathematical achievement.

Achievement, that's a word you hear often around St. Mary's academy. Calcea and Ne'Kiya follow a long line of barrier-breaking graduates. 

The late queen of Creole cooking, Leah Chase , was an alum. so was the first African-American female New Orleans police chief, Michelle Woodfork …

And judge for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Dana Douglas. Math teacher Michelle Blouin Williams told us Calcea and Ne'Kiya are typical St. Mary's students.  

Bill Whitaker: They're not unicorns.

Michelle Blouin Williams: Oh, no no. If they are unicorns, then every single lady that has matriculated through this school is a beautiful, Black unicorn.

Pamela Rogers: You're good?

Pamela Rogers, St. Mary's president and interim principal, told us the students hear that message from the moment they walk in the door.

Pamela Rogers: We believe all students can succeed, all students can learn. It does not matter the environment that you live in. 

Bill Whitaker: So when word went out that two of your students had solved this almost impossible math problem, were they universally applauded?

Pamela Rogers: In this community, they were greatly applauded. Across the country, there were many naysayers.

Bill Whitaker: What were they saying?

Pamela Rogers: They were saying, "Oh, they could not have done it. African Americans don't have the brains to do it." Of course, we sheltered our girls from that. But we absolutely did not expect it to come in the volume that it came.  

Bill Whitaker: And after such a wonderful achievement.

Pamela Rogers: People-- have a vision of who can be successful. And-- to some people, it is not always an African American female. And to us, it's always an African American female.

Gloria Ladson-Billings: What we know is when teachers lay out some expectations that say, "You can do this," kids will work as hard as they can to do it.

Gloria Ladson-Billings, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, has studied how best to teach African American students. She told us an encouraging teacher can change a life.

Bill Whitaker: And what's the difference, say, between having a teacher like that and a whole school dedicated to the excellence of these students?

Gloria Ladson-Billings: So a whole school is almost like being in Heaven. 

Bill Whitaker: What do you mean by that?

Gloria Ladson-Billings: Many of our young people have their ceilings lowered, that somewhere around fourth or fifth grade, their thoughts are, "I'm not going to be anything special." What I think is probably happening at St. Mary's is young women come in as, perhaps, ninth graders and are told, "Here's what we expect to happen. And here's how we're going to help you get there."

At St. Mary's, half the students get scholarships, subsidized by fundraising to defray the $8,000 a year tuition. Here, there's no test to get in, but expectations are high and rules are strict: no cellphones, modest skirts, hair must be its natural color.

Students Rayah Siddiq, Summer Forde, Carissa Washington, Tatum Williams and Christina Blazio told us they appreciate the rules and rigor.

Rayah Siddiq: Especially the standards that they set for us. They're very high. And I don't think that's ever going to change.

Bill Whitaker: So is there a heart, a philosophy, an essence to St. Mary's?

Summer Forde: The sisterhood—

Carissa Washington: Sisterhood.

Tatum Williams: Sisterhood.

Bill Whitaker: The sisterhood?

Voices: Yes.

Bill Whitaker: And you don't mean the nuns. You mean-- (laughter)

Christina Blazio: I mean, yeah. The community—

Bill Whitaker: So when you're here, there's just no question that you're going to go on to college.

Rayah Siddiq: College is all they talk about. (laughter) 

Pamela Rogers: … and Arizona State University (Cheering)

Principal Rogers announces to her 615 students the colleges where every senior has been accepted.

Bill Whitaker: So for 17 years, you've had a 100% graduation rate—

Pamela Rogers: Yes.

Bill Whitaker: --and a 100% college acceptance rate?

Pamela Rogers: That's correct.

Last year when Ne'Kiya and Calcea graduated, all their classmates went to college and got scholarships. Ne'Kiya got a full ride to the pharmacy school at Xavier University in New Orleans. Calcea, the class valedictorian, is studying environmental engineering at Louisiana State University.

Bill Whitaker: So wait a minute. Neither one of you is going to pursue a career in math?

Both: No. (laugh)

Calcea Johnson: I may take up a minor in math. But I don't want that to be my job job.

Ne'Kiya Jackson: Yeah. People might expect too much out of me if (laugh) I become a mathematician. (laugh)

But math is not completely in their rear-view mirrors. This spring they submitted their high school proofs for final peer review and publication … and are still working on further proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem. Since their first two …

Calcea Johnson: We found five. And then we found a general format that could potentially produce at least five additional proofs.

Bill Whitaker: And you're not math geniuses?

Bill Whitaker: I'm not buying it. (laughs)

Produced by Sara Kuzmarov. Associate producer, Mariah B. Campbell. Edited by Daniel J. Glucksman.

Bill Whitaker is an award-winning journalist and 60 Minutes correspondent who has covered major news stories, domestically and across the globe, for more than four decades with CBS News.

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Wavefunction matching for solving quantum many-body problems

Strongly interacting systems play an important role in quantum physics and quantum chemistry. Stochastic methods such as Monte Carlo simulations are a proven method for investigating such systems. However, these methods reach their limits when so-called sign oscillations occur. This problem has now been solved by an international team of researchers from Germany, Turkey, the USA, China, South Korea and France using the new method of wavefunction matching. As an example, the masses and radii of all nuclei up to mass number 50 were calculated using this method. The results agree with the measurements, the researchers now report in the journal " Nature ."

All matter on Earth consists of tiny particles known as atoms. Each atom contains even smaller particles: protons, neutrons and electrons. Each of these particles follows the rules of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics forms the basis of quantum many-body theory, which describes systems with many particles, such as atomic nuclei.

One class of methods used by nuclear physicists to study atomic nuclei is the ab initio approach. It describes complex systems by starting from a description of their elementary components and their interactions. In the case of nuclear physics, the elementary components are protons and neutrons. Some key questions that ab initio calculations can help answer are the binding energies and properties of atomic nuclei and the link between nuclear structure and the underlying interactions between protons and neutrons.

However, these ab initio methods have difficulties in performing reliable calculations for systems with complex interactions. One of these methods is quantum Monte Carlo simulations. Here, quantities are calculated using random or stochastic processes. Although quantum Monte Carlo simulations can be efficient and powerful, they have a significant weakness: the sign problem. It arises in processes with positive and negative weights, which cancel each other. This cancellation leads to inaccurate final predictions.

A new approach, known as wavefunction matching, is intended to help solve such calculation problems for ab initio methods. "This problem is solved by the new method of wavefunction matching by mapping the complicated problem in a first approximation to a simple model system that does not have such sign oscillations and then treating the differences in perturbation theory," says Prof. Ulf-G. Meißner from the Helmholtz Institute for Radiation and Nuclear Physics at the University of Bonn and from the Institute of Nuclear Physics and the Center for Advanced Simulation and Analytics at Forschungszentrum Jülich. "As an example, the masses and radii of all nuclei up to mass number 50 were calculated -- and the results agree with the measurements," reports Meißner, who is also a member of the Transdisciplinary Research Areas "Modeling" and "Matter" at the University of Bonn.

"In quantum many-body theory, we are often faced with the situation that we can perform calculations using a simple approximate interaction, but realistic high-fidelity interactions cause severe computational problems," says Dean Lee, Professor of Physics from the Facility for Rare Istope Beams and Department of Physics and Astronomy (FRIB) at Michigan State University and head of the Department of Theoretical Nuclear Sciences.

Wavefunction matching solves this problem by removing the short-distance part of the high-fidelity interaction and replacing it with the short-distance part of an easily calculable interaction. This transformation is done in a way that preserves all the important properties of the original realistic interaction. Since the new wavefunctions are similar to those of the easily computable interaction, the researchers can now perform calculations with the easily computable interaction and apply a standard procedure for handling small corrections -- called perturbation theory.

The research team applied this new method to lattice quantum Monte Carlo simulations for light nuclei, medium-mass nuclei, neutron matter and nuclear matter. Using precise ab initio calculations, the results closely matched real-world data on nuclear properties such as size, structure and binding energy. Calculations that were once impossible due to the sign problem can now be performed with wavefunction matching.

While the research team focused exclusively on quantum Monte Carlo simulations, wavefunction matching should be useful for many different ab initio approaches. "This method can be used in both classical computing and quantum computing, for example to better predict the properties of so-called topological materials, which are important for quantum computing," says Meißner.

The first author is Prof. Dr. Serdar Elhatisari, who worked for two years as a Fellow in Prof. Meißner's ERC Advanced Grant EXOTIC. According to Meißner, a large part of the work was carried out during this time. Part of the computing time on supercomputers at Forschungszentrum Jülich was provided by the IAS-4 institute, which Meißner heads.

• Quantum Computers
• Computers and Internet
• Computer Modeling
• Spintronics Research
• Mathematics
• Quantum mechanics
• Quantum entanglement
• Introduction to quantum mechanics
• Computer simulation
• Quantum computer
• Quantum dot
• Quantum tunnelling
• Security engineering

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Bonn . Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

• Serdar Elhatisari, Lukas Bovermann, Yuan-Zhuo Ma, Evgeny Epelbaum, Dillon Frame, Fabian Hildenbrand, Myungkuk Kim, Youngman Kim, Hermann Krebs, Timo A. Lähde, Dean Lee, Ning Li, Bing-Nan Lu, Ulf-G. Meißner, Gautam Rupak, Shihang Shen, Young-Ho Song, Gianluca Stellin. Wavefunction matching for solving quantum many-body problems . Nature , 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07422-z

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