Archive

Physicists have discovered that the ring of photons orbiting a black hole exhibits a special kind of symmetry, hinting at a deeper meaning.

When the brain encodes memories as positive or negative, one molecule determines which way they will go.

What’s a message, really? Claude Shannon recognized that the elemental ingredient is surprise.

The grainy image of a “super-Jupiter” is a sign of what’s to come as the telescope’s exoplanet observations ramp up.

Rethinking questions and chasing patterns led Newton to find the connection between curves and infinite sums.

Anima Anandkumar wants computer scientists to move beyond the matrix, among other challenges.

A new study reveals that bacteria can fight viruses in a surprisingly elegant way that has no known counterpart in more complex life.

Eric Larson and Isabel Vogt have solved the interpolation problem — a centuries-old question about some of the most basic objects in geometry. Some credit goes to the chalkboard in their living room.

Dreams are subjective, but there are ways to peer into the minds of people while they are dreaming. Steven Strogatz speaks with sleep researcher Antonio Zadra about how new experimental methods have changed our understanding of dreams.