Explainers

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.

No matter how much we’d like to eradicate SARS-CoV-2, it may be better to settle for other forms of control.

Quantum bits are fussy and fragile. Useful quantum computers will need to use an error-correction technique like the one that was recently demonstrated on a real machine.