Consciousness, our experience of being in the world, is one of the mind’s greatest mysteries, but as the neuroscientist Anil Seth explains to Steven Strogatz, research is making progress in understanding this elusive phenomenon.

One student’s desire to get out of a final exam led to the ubiquitous algorithm that shrinks data without sacrificing information.

Changes in the 3D structure of their genome gave skates and rays their distinctive winglike fins and pancake flatness.

Renate Loll has helped pioneer a radically new approach to quantum gravity. She assumes that the fabric of space-time is a blend of all possible fabrics, and she has developed the computational tools needed to calculate the far-reaching implications of that assumption.

New experiments show that the brain distinguishes between perceived and imagined mental images by checking whether they cross a “reality threshold.”

Simple math can help explain the complexities of the newly discovered aperiodic monotile.

Researchers uncover striking parallels in the ways that humans and machine learning models acquire language skills.

In steganography, an ordinary message masks the presence of a secret communication. Humans can never do it perfectly, but a new study shows it’s possible for machines.

Several areas of physics suggest reasons to think that unobservable universes with different natural laws could lie beyond ours. The theoretical physicist David Kaplan talks with Steven Strogatz about the mysteries that a multiverse would solve.