Abstractions blog

Physicists plan to leave no stone unturned, checking whether dark matter tickles different types of detectors, nudges starlight, warms planetary cores or even lodges in rocks.

Even genes essential for life can be caught in an evolutionary arms race that forces them to change or be replaced.

The newly-measured rate of a key nuclear fusion process from the Big Bang matches the picture of the universe 380,000 years later.

For almost a century, the anonymous members of Nicolas Bourbaki have written books intended as pure expressions of mathematical thought.

Once missing in action, middleweight black holes have finally been detected. Now researchers are trying to figure out how they grow from small ones.

Researchers see structural changes in genetic material that allow memories to strengthen when remembered.

The p-adics form an infinite collection of number systems based on prime numbers. They’re at the heart of modern number theory.

Physicists have reached a long-sought goal. The catch is that their room-temperature superconductor requires crushing pressures to keep from falling apart.

The ingredients for reactions ancestral to metabolism could have formed very easily in the primordial soup, new work suggests.