Archive

Mathematicians are working to fully explain unusual behaviors uncovered using artificial intelligence.

By mapping the largest structures in the universe in X-rays, cosmologists have found striking agreement with their standard theoretical model of how the universe evolves.

The visual systems of an obscure group of mollusks provide a rare natural example of path-dependent evolution, in which a critical fork in the creatures’ past determined their evolutionary futures.

Time is all around us: in the language we use, in the memories we revisit and in our predictions of the future. But what exactly is it? The physicist and Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek joins Steve Strogatz to discuss the fundamental hallmarks of time.

Erasing key information during training results in machine learning models that can learn new languages faster and more easily.

Simple rules in simple settings continue to puzzle mathematicians, even as they devise intricate tools to analyze them.

A series of advances seemed to promise the impossible: the existence of quantum states that would never, ever fall into disarray. But physicists are now discovering that the pull of disorder may not be so easily overcome.

Two researchers have proved that Penrose tilings, famous patterns that never repeat, are mathematically equivalent to a kind of quantum error correction.

This past October, dozens of mathematicians gathered in Pasadena to create the third version of “Kirby’s list” — a compendium of the most important unsolved problems in the field.