Archive

Mathematicians thought they were on the cusp of proving a conjecture about the ancient structures known as Apollonian circles. But a summer project would lead to its downfall.

By watching “minimal” cells regain the fitness they lost, researchers are testing whether a genome can be too simple to evolve.

New observations of a faraway rocky world that might have its own magnetic field could help astronomers understand the seemingly haphazard magnetic fields swaddling our solar system’s planets.

Genetic elements called Mavericks that have some viral features could be responsible for the large-scale smuggling of DNA between species.

Inside of a black hole, the two theoretical pillars of 20th-century physics appear to clash. Now a group of young physicists think they have resolved the conflict by appealing to the central pillar of the new century — the physics of quantum information.

The numbers count a variety of seemingly unrelated mathematical structures.

For over a century, biologists have had to contend with a complicated picture of genetics, which they’ve only recently begun to understand.

Yael Tauman Kalai’s breakthroughs secure our digital world, from cloud computing to our quantum future.

Even empty space bubbles with energy, according to quantum mechanics — and that fact affects almost every facet of physical reality. The theoretical physicist Isabel Garcia Garcia explains to Steven Strogatz why it’s so important in modern physics to understand what a true vacuum is.