Archive
Latest Articles
Quantum Cryptography Pioneers Win Turing Award
Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard were recognized for their foundational work in quantum information science.
The Math That Explains Why Bell Curves Are Everywhere
The central limit theorem started as a bar trick for 18th-century gamblers. Now scientists rely on it every day.
Why Do Humanoid Robots Still Struggle With the Small Stuff?
The last decade has seen vast improvements in humanoid robots, but graduating to widespread use might require going back to the fundamentals.
Where Some See Strings, She Sees a Space-Time Made of Fractals
Pushed down to a certain scale, the laws of physics seem to fall apart. Astrid Eichhorn, a leader in an area of study called asymptotic safety, thinks we just need to push a little further.
Disorder Drives One of Nature’s Most Complex Machines
Every second, hundreds to thousands of molecules move through thousands of nuclear pores in each of your cells. A new high-definition view reveals the machine in action.
New Strides Made on Deceptively Simple ‘Lonely Runner’ Problem
A straightforward conjecture about runners moving around a track turns out to be equivalent to many complex mathematical questions. Three new proofs mark the first significant progress on the problem in decades.
Can the Most Abstract Math Make the World a Better Place?
Columnist Natalie Wolchover explores whether applied category theory can be “green” math.
What Crystals Older Than the Sun Reveal About the Start of the Solar System
Microscopic crystals extracted from meteorites could help settle a debate about the birth of our patch of the Milky Way.
Break It To Make It: How Fracturing Sculpts Tissues and Organs
Growing tissues can crack, break, and dissociate to form structures that can later withstand immense forces.