Archive

For a half century, mathematicians have tried to define the exact circumstances under which a black hole is destined to exist. A new proof shows how a cube can help answer the question.

Why did mammals, grasses and some other groups of organisms explode in diversity only after millions of years? The evolutionary biologist Andreas Wagner plumbs the secrets of those “sleeping beauties.”

Giant black holes were supposed to be bit players in the early cosmic story. But recent James Webb Space Telescope observations are finding an unexpected abundance of the beasts.

New results break with decades of conventional wisdom for the gradient descent algorithm.

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.