Archive

Glass is anything that’s rigid like a crystal, yet made of disordered molecules like a liquid. To understand why it exists, researchers are attempting to create the perfect, still-hypothetical “ideal glass.”

The mathematician Tadashi Tokieda and host Steven Strogatz explore what we can learn about the world from simple “toys” with remarkable physical or mathematical properties.

Finding the best way to approximate the ever-elusive irrational numbers pits the infinitely large against the infinitely small.

To combat resistant bacteria and refill the trickling antibiotic pipeline, scientists are getting help from deep learning networks.

Recent findings add weight to the evidence that the intransitive competitions between species enrich the diversity of nature.

Computer scientists established a new boundary on computationally verifiable knowledge. In doing so, they solved major open problems in quantum mechanics and pure mathematics.

The astrophysicist Janna Levin describes the fierce scientific beauty she finds in black holes and reveals why she took a major risk early in her career.

As the founding director of a new institute for fundamental research in Rwanda, the physicist Omololu Akin-Ojo hopes to stem the brain drain of Africa’s brightest minds.

The recent discovery of some of the first galaxies in the universe illuminates the darkest era in cosmic history.