Topologists prove two new results that bring some order to the confoundingly difficult study of four-dimensional shapes.

A group of prominent biologists and philosophers announced a new consensus: There’s “a realistic possibility” that insects, octopuses, crustaceans, fish and other overlooked animals experience consciousness.

Researchers have shown how to find the simplest description of a data set faster than by simply checking every possibility.

Physicists and cosmologists will have a new probe of primordial processes when Europe launches the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) next decade.

The work of the neuroscientist Ishmail Abdus-Saboor has opened up a world of insights into precisely how much pleasure and pain animals experience during different forms of touch.

Mathematicians think abstract tools from a field called symplectic geometry might help with planning missions to far-off moons and planets.

By apparently overtraining them, researchers have seen neural networks discover novel solutions to problems.

Founding editor-in-chief Thomas Lin looks back at a decade of Quanta journalism and forward to what’s next for the magazine.

New research has uncovered a social world of viruses full of cheating, cooperation and other intrigues, suggesting that viruses make sense only as members of a community.