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Mitochondria Double as Tiny Lenses in the Eye
The optical properties of mitochondrial bundles in the retina may improve how efficiently the eye captures light.
Father-Son Team Solves Geometry Problem With Infinite Folds
The result could help researchers answer a larger question about flattening objects from the fourth dimension to the third dimension.
Dennis Sullivan, Uniter of Topology and Chaos, Wins the Abel Prize
The American mathematician invented entire new ways to understand shapes and spaces.
A New Tool for Finding Dark Matter Digs Up Nothing
Physicists are devising clever new ways to exploit the extreme sensitivity of gravitational wave detectors like LIGO. But so far, they’ve seen no signs of exotica.
An Antimatter Experiment Shows Surprises Near Absolute Zero
An experiment conducted on hybrid matter-antimatter atoms has defied researchers’ expectations.
Math’s ‘Oldest Problem Ever’ Gets a New Answer
A new proof significantly strengthens a decades-old result about the ubiquity of ways to represent whole numbers as sums of unit fractions.
Peptides on Stardust May Have Provided a Shortcut to Life
The discovery that short peptides can form spontaneously on cosmic dust hints at more of a role for them in the earliest stages of life’s origin, on Earth or elsewhere.
In New Math Proofs, Artificial Intelligence Plays to Win
A new computer program fashioned after artificial intelligence systems like AlphaGo has solved several open problems in combinatorics and graph theory.
Scientists Watch a Memory Form in a Living Brain
While watching a fearful memory take shape in the brain of a living fish, neuroscientists see an unexpected level of rewiring occur in the synaptic connections.