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The Scientist Who Decodes the Songs of Undersea Volcanoes
In the rumbles and groans of underwater volcanoes, Jackie Caplan-Auerbach finds her favorite harmonies — and clues to the Earth’s interior.
In the ‘Wild West’ of Geometry, Mathematicians Redefine the Sphere
High-dimensional spheres can have a much wider variety of structures than mathematicians thought possible.
Cryptographers Solve Decades-Old Privacy Problem
Three researchers have found a long-sought way to pull information from large databases secretly, moving us closer to fully private internet searches.
These Moons Are Dark and Frozen. So How Can They Have Oceans?
The moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn appear to have subsurface oceans — tantalizing targets in the search for life beyond Earth. But it’s not clear why these seas exist at all.
The Hidden Connection That Changed Number Theory
Quadratic reciprocity lurks around many corners in mathematics. By proving it, number theorists reimagined their whole field.
Bats Use the Same Brain Cells to Map Physical and Social Worlds
New research in social bats raises the intriguing possibility that evolution can reprogram the brain’s “place cells,” which are typically associated with location, to encode all kinds of environmental information.
A Brief History of Tricky Mathematical Tiling
The discovery earlier this year of the “hat” tile marked the culmination of hundreds of years of work into tiles and their symmetries.
A New Generation of Mathematicians Pushes Prime Number Barriers
New work attacks a long-standing barrier to understanding how prime numbers are distributed.
Biophysicists Uncover Powerful Symmetries in Living Tissue
After identifying interlocking symmetries in mammalian cells, scientists can describe some tissues as liquid crystals — an observation that lays the groundwork for a fluid-dynamic theory of how tissues move.