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The Problem With Dancing Shapes
In a geometrically designed social club, how do dancing, triangles and hexagons mix?
Scientists Debate Signatures of Alien Life
Searching for signs of life on faraway planets, astrobiologists must decide which telltale biosignature gases to target.
Solution: ‘Sleeping Beauty’s Dilemma’
The solution to this month’s puzzle gets to the bottom of the famously ambiguous Sleeping Beauty probability problem.
Searching for the Algorithms Underlying Life
The biological world is computational at its core, argues computer scientist Leslie Valiant.
New Clues to How the Brain Maps Time
The same brain cells that track location in space appear to also count beats in time. The research suggests that our thoughts may take place on a mental space-time canvas.
Taming Superconductors With String Theory
The physicist Subir Sachdev borrows tools from string theory to understand the puzzling behavior of high-temperature superconductors.
Quantum Weirdness Now a Matter of Time
Bizarre quantum bonds connect distinct moments in time, suggesting that quantum links — not space-time — constitute the fundamental structure of the universe.
Sleeping Beauty’s Necker Cube Dilemma
Like a visually ambiguous Necker cube, the famous Sleeping Beauty problem can be perceived in two seemingly valid ways.
String Theory Meets Loop Quantum Gravity
Two leading candidates for a “theory of everything,” long thought to be incompatible, may be two sides of the same coin.