Abstractions blog

The ancient study of an object’s curvature is guiding mathematicians toward a new understanding of simple equations.

The legendary graph isomorphism problem may be harder than a 2015 result seemed to suggest.

Can you turn a two-dimensional fractal into a 3-D object? Break out your scissors and tape for a chance to win a 3-D printed sculpture.

A mission to collect samples from the far side of the moon could answer questions about a barrage of asteroids nearly 4 billion years ago.

The effort to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity means reconciling totally different notions of time.

How do physicists reconstruct what really happened in a particle collision? Through calculations that are so challenging that, in some cases, they simply can’t be done. Yet.

The same problem that caused the 2007 financial crisis also tripped up the polling data ahead of this year’s presidential election.

So-called “analogue experiments” are becoming increasingly common in physics, but do they teach or mislead?

The results of this year’s presidential election made a mockery of analytical election forecast modelers.