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The ‘Elegant’ Math Model That Could Help Rescue Coral Reefs
Physicists and marine biologists built a quantitative framework that predicts how coral polyps collectively construct a variety of coral shapes.
New Maps of the Bizarre, Chaotic Space-Time Inside Black Holes
Physicists hope that understanding the churning region near singularities might help them reconcile gravity and quantum mechanics.
How ‘Event Scripts’ Structure Our Personal Memories
By screening films in a brain scanner, neuroscientists discovered a rich library of neural scripts — from a trip through an airport to a marriage proposal — that form scaffolds for memories of our experiences.
After 20 Years, Math Couple Solves Major Group Theory Problem
Britta Späth has dedicated her career to proving a single, central conjecture. She’s finally succeeded, alongside her partner, Marc Cabanes.
Catalytic Computing Taps the Full Power of a Full Hard Drive
Ten years ago, researchers proved that adding full memory can theoretically aid computation. They’re just now beginning to understand the implications.
The Largest Sofa You Can Move Around a Corner
A new proof reveals the answer to the decades-old “moving sofa” problem. It highlights how even the simplest optimization problems can have counterintuitive answers.
How Hans Bethe Stumbled Upon Perfect Quantum Theories
Quantum calculations amount to sophisticated estimates. But in 1931, Hans Bethe intuited precisely how a chain of particles would behave — an insight that had far-reaching consequences.
Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture
A young computer scientist and two colleagues show that searches within data structures called hash tables can be much faster than previously deemed possible.
How Noether’s Theorem Revolutionized Physics
Emmy Noether showed that fundamental physical laws are just a consequence of simple symmetries. A century later, her insights continue to shape physics.