Archive

It was an old idea of Stephen Hawking’s: Unseen “primordial” black holes might be the hidden dark matter. A new series of studies has shown how the theory can work.

Despite recent progress on the notorious Collatz conjecture, we still don’t know whether a number can escape its infinite loop.

Computer scientists are trying to build an AI system that can win a gold medal at the world’s premier math competition.

Renormalization has become perhaps the single most important advance in theoretical physics in 50 years.

Two computer scientists found — in the unlikeliest of places — just the idea they needed to make a big leap in graph theory.

A novel form of immunological memory that was mostly ignored for a century extends the benefits of vaccines. It could be of help in ending the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mathematicians have long grappled with the reality that some problems just don’t have solutions.

For millennia, mathematicians have wondered whether odd perfect numbers exist, establishing an extraordinary list of restrictions for the hypothetical objects in the process. Insight on this question could come from studying the next best things.

Carpenter ants need endosymbiotic bacteria to guide the early development of their embryos. New work has reconstructed how this deep partnership evolved.