Archive

As computer-driven cars and planes become more common, the key to preventing accidents, researchers show, is to know what you don’t know.

The links between math, music and art have been explored for thousands of years. Sarah Hart is now turning a mathematical eye to literature.

In an atomically thin stack of semiconductors, a mechanism unseen in any natural substance causes electrons’ spins to align.

Locally correctable codes need barely any information to fix errors, but they’re extremely long. Now we know that the simplest versions can’t get any shorter.

Biologists discovered that mitochondria in different tissues talk to each other to repair injured cells. When their signal fails, the biological clock starts winding down.

Researchers are discovering the shortest knots and fattest Möbius strips, among other “optimal shapes.”

Last spring, scientists retrieved a trove of mantle rocks from underneath the Atlantic seafloor — a bounty that could help write the first chapter of life's story on Earth.

Throughout her 60-year career, Lenore Blum has developed new perspectives on logic and computation while championing women in mathematics and computer science. Now consciousness is on her mind.

Why does natural selection appear to happen slowly on long timescales and quickly on short ones? A multigenerational study of four lizard species addresses biology’s “paradox of stasis.”