Abstractions blog

The goal of the “busy beaver” game is to find the longest-running computer program. Its pursuit has surprising connections to some of the most profound questions and concepts in mathematics.

The simple insight that most changes are random had a profound effect on genetics, evolution and ecology.

A team in Paris has made the most precise measurement yet of the fine-structure constant, killing hopes for a new force of nature.

In three bursts of adaptive change, one species of cichlid fish in Lake Tanganyika gave rise to hundreds.

At 21, Ashwin Sah has produced a body of work that senior mathematicians say is nearly unprecedented for a college student.

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.