Abstractions blog

Mathematicians try to figure out when problems can be solved using current knowledge — and when they have to chart a new path instead.

Collider physicists report that several measurements of particles called B mesons deviate from predictions. Alone, each oddity looks like a fluke, but their collective drift is more suggestive.

Studies of collective behavior usually focus on how crowds of organisms coordinate their actions. But what if the individuals that don’t participate have just as much to tell us?

A lizard that both lays eggs and gives birth to live young is helping scientists understand how and why these forms of reproduction evolved.

Anyons don’t fit into either of the two known particle kingdoms. To find them, physicists had to erase the third dimension.

Two ways of approximating the ultra-complicated math that governs quark particles have recently come into conflict, leaving physicists unsure what their decades-old theory predicts.

In the fight against viruses and other pathogens, scientists are looking beyond genes and proteins to the complex sugars, or glycans, on cell surfaces.

Modern mathematics relies on collaboration and travel. COVID-19 is making it increasingly difficult.

Physicists have proposed extra cosmic ingredients that could explain the faster-than-expected expansion of space.