Abstractions blog

A startling experimental discovery about how fluids behave started a wave of important mathematical proofs.

In evolution, context is everything: Bacteria with neighbors evolve to rebuff viruses in a different way.

To scientists’ surprise, blended mixtures of cytoplasm can reorganize themselves into cell-like compartments with working structural components.

A study challenged the evidence for the mysterious antigravitational force known as dark energy. Then cosmologists shot back.

An organized tide of brain waves, blood and spinal fluid pulsing through a sleeping brain may flush away neural toxins that cause Alzheimer’s and other diseases.

By considering simple symmetries, physicists working on the “bootstrap” can rediscover the basic form of the known forces that shape the universe.

For the first time, physicists have calculated exactly what kind of singularity lies at the center of a realistic black hole.

Physicists have long searched for hypothesized dark matter particles called WIMPs. Now, focus may be shifting to the axion — an ultra-lightweight particle whose existence would solve two mysteries at once.

Calculations involving a higher dimension are guiding physicists toward a misstep in Stephen Hawking’s legendary black hole analysis.