Explainers

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.

Built upon the ubiquitous Fourier transform, the mathematical tools known as wavelets allow unprecedented analysis and understanding of continuous signals.

As topologists seek to classify shapes, the effort hinges on how to define a manifold and what it means for two of them to be equivalent.

Genomes hold immense quantities of noncoding DNA. Some of it is essential for life, some seems useless, and some has its own agenda.

One of the strangest results in mathematics explains how it’s possible to turn one sphere into two identical copies, simply by rearranging its pieces.

Brown dwarfs such as “The Accident” are illuminating the murky borderlands that separate planets from stars.