Archive

A recent cryptographic breakthrough has proven difficult to put into practice. But new advances show how near-perfect computer security might be surprisingly close at hand.

The mathematician John Horton Conway’s myriad accomplishments — including the Game of Life, sprouts and the surreal numbers — are the product of a mind at play.

A new understanding of viral swarms is helping researchers predict how viruses will evolve and where disease is likely to spread.

The physicist James Bullock explains how a complicated “dark sector” of interacting particles may illuminate some puzzling observations of the centers of galaxies.

Emerging data suggests the seemingly impossible — that mysterious new genes arise from “junk” DNA.

The solution to this month’s puzzle examines the use of abstract probabilities as an antidote to real-world ignorance.

Did the minerals on our planet arise in a predictable fashion, or did they result from chance events? The answers could eventually help scientists identify planets likely to harbor life.

For more than 50 years, the mathematician Neil Sloane has curated the authoritative collection of interesting and important integer sequences.

Explore the deepest mysteries at the frontier of fundamental physics, and the most promising ideas put forth to solve them.