Archive

Maintaining perfect stability through negative feedback is a basic element of electrical circuitry, but it’s been a mystery how cells could do it — until now.

In some ways, machine vision is superior to human vision. In other ways, it may never catch up.

Origin-of-life researchers have usually studied the potential of pure starting materials, but messy mixtures of chemicals may kick-start life more effectively.

A giant star’s death throes may offer the first evidence of a pair-instability supernova, and a glimpse of the first stars in the universe.

A new measurement appears to have eliminated an anomaly that had captivated physicists for nearly a decade.

Clues from fish diversity suggest that interbreeding between species could be a major mechanism of fast speciation.

There are many different ways to think about probability. Quantum mechanics embodies them all.

Since the 1970s, physicists have described black holes using borrowed versions of the laws of thermodynamics. But are black holes really thermodynamic systems? Craig Callender worries that the analogy has been stretched too far.

Genetically identical bacteria should all be the same, but in fact, the cells are stubbornly varied individuals.