Intelligent beings learn by interacting with the world. Artificial intelligence researchers have adopted a similar strategy to teach their virtual agents new tricks.

A new proof identifies precisely how large a mathematical graph must be before it contains a regular substructure.

Quantum computers may derive their power from the “magical” way that properties of particles change depending on the context.

Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist who became a lifeline for the worried and the curious during the pandemic, thinks that nasal spray vaccines could be the next needed breakthrough in our fight against the coronavirus.

For decades mathematicians have searched for a specific pair of surfaces that can’t be transformed into each other in four-dimensional space. Now they’ve found them.

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.