Explainers

What’s a message, really? Claude Shannon recognized that the elemental ingredient is surprise.

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

Why verify every line of a proof, when just a few checks will do?

Several projects are aiming to bring back mammoths and other species that have vanished from the planet. Whether that’s technically possible is beside the point.

While it’s understandable to focus on the diseases affecting humans, it’s important to study how our illnesses may affect animals.

Cryptographers want to know which of five possible worlds we inhabit, which will reveal whether truly secure cryptography is even possible.

Traditional algorithms power complicated computational tools like machine learning. A new approach, called algorithms with predictions, uses the power of machine learning to improve algorithms.

Three mathematicians show, for the first time, how to form a square with the same area as a circle by cutting them into interchangeable pieces that can be visualized.

The same phenomenon by which an opera singer can shatter a wineglass also underlies the very existence of subatomic particles.