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Tiny Genomes May Offer Clues to First Plants and Animals
Symbiotic bacteria that dwell within insect cells are intricately intertwined with their hosts, prompting scientists to question when these bacteria stop being bona fide organisms and become part of the cell.
A New Approach to Building the Tree of Life
More genetic data is available than ever before to help build evolutionary trees, but scientists are finding that different genes even in the same organism can tell conflicting stories.
Is Nature Unnatural?
Decades of confounding experiments have physicists considering a startling possibility: The universe might not make sense.
Waiting for the Revolution
An interview with the Nobel Prize-winner David J. Gross on the confusing state of theoretical physics.
Unheralded Mathematician Bridges the Prime Gap
A virtually unknown researcher has made a great advance in one of mathematics’ oldest problems, the twin primes conjecture.
Perpetual Motion Test Could Amend Theory of Time
A radical theory predicting the existence of “time crystals” — perpetual motion objects that break the symmetry of time — is being put to the test.
Scientists Parse Ocean’s Dynamic Role in Climate Change
New data collected by mathematicians and oceanographers in the frigid waters of the Southern Ocean could dramatically improve climate models.
Solid or Liquid? Physicists Redefine States of Matter
Glass and other strange materials have long confounded textbook definitions of what it means to be solid. Now, two groups of physicists propose a new solution to the riddle.
Biologists Home In on Turing Patterns
New research has prompted a resurgence of interest in the patterning mechanisms Alan Turing proposed 60 years ago.