Archive

Without a good definition of life, how do we look for it on alien planets? Steven Strogatz speaks with Robert Hazen, a mineralogist and astrobiologist, and Sheref Mansy, a chemist, to learn more.

Physicists have solved a key problem of robotic locomotion by revising the usual rules of interaction between simple component parts.

Neuroscientists uncovered an energy-saving mode in vision-system neurons that works at the cost of being able to see fine-grained details.

Daniel Spielman solves important problems by thinking hard — about other questions.

Observations of faraway planets have forced a near-total rewrite of the story of how our solar system came to be.

Computer scientists can now solve a decades-old problem in practically the time it takes to write it down.

The lush biodiversity of the Amazon may be due in part to the dynamics of branching rivers, which serve as invisible fences that continuously barricade and merge bird populations.

Jared Duker Lichtman, 26, has proved a longstanding conjecture relating prime numbers to a broad class of “primitive” sets. To his adviser, it came as a “complete shock.”

Some animal neuropeptides have been around longer than nervous systems.