Archive

Evolution settled on a genetic code that uses four letters to name 20 amino acids. Synthetic biologists adding new bases to DNA will be free to improve on nature — if they can.

This holiday season, catch up on science and math news while solving our year-end crossword.

Two mathematicians prove that under certain extreme conditions, the Navier-Stokes equations output nonsense.

Corina Tarnita deciphers bizarre patterns in the soil created by competing life-forms.

For decades, an origin-of-life story starring RNA has prevailed. New research may be shaking that theory’s hold on our understanding of life’s beginnings.

The mother of all string theories passes a litmus test that, so far, no other candidate theory of quantum gravity has been able to match.

Nobel laureate Susumu Tonegawa’s lab is overturning old assumptions about how memories form, how recall works and whether lost memories might be restored from “silent engrams.”

The rapid, unorthodox emergence of a new finch in the Galápagos hints that speciation isn’t rare. New hybrid species may quietly appear and disappear without anyone noticing.

Updated results from a Japanese neutrino experiment continue to reveal an inconsistency in the way that matter and antimatter behave.