Archive

Theorists are in a frenzy over “fractons,” bizarre, but potentially useful, hypothetical particles that can only move in combination with one another.

Using high school algebra and geometry, and knowing just one rational point on a circle or elliptic curve, we can locate infinitely many others.

Scientists have reported large DNA structures in some archaea that defy easy categorization.

The root of today’s quantum revolution was John Stewart Bell’s 1964 theorem showing that quantum mechanics really permits instantaneous connections between far-apart locations.

Laurent Fargues and Peter Scholze have found a new, more powerful way of connecting number theory and geometry as part of the sweeping Langlands program.

The Standard Model is a sweeping equation that has correctly predicted the results of virtually every experiment ever conducted, as Quanta explores in a new video.

For 50 years, mathematicians have believed that the total number of real numbers is unknowable. A new proof suggests otherwise.

Melanie Mitchell has worked on digital minds for decades. She says they’ll never truly be like ours until they can make analogies.

The DNA of some viruses doesn’t use the same four nucleotide bases found in all other life. New work shows how this exception is possible and hints that it could be more common than we think.