Abstractions blog

Modern mathematics relies on collaboration and travel. COVID-19 is making it increasingly difficult.

Physicists have proposed extra cosmic ingredients that could explain the faster-than-expected expansion of space.

And why is the black hole at the center of our own galaxy so dim?

The “pinball” model of a slipping fault line borrows from the mathematics of avalanches.

The legendary mathematician, who died on April 11, was curious, colorful and one of the greatest problem-solvers of his generation.

The first official evidence of a key imbalance between neutrinos and antineutrinos provides one of the best clues for why the universe contains something rather than nothing.

A landmark proof in computer science has also solved an important problem called the Connes embedding conjecture. Mathematicians are working to understand it.

Sometimes a mirror that reflects 99.9999% of light isn’t good enough.

Three progressively heavier copies of each type of matter particle exist, and no one knows why. A new paper by Steven Weinberg takes a stab at explaining the pattern.