Mathematicians have figured out exactly how many moves it takes to randomize a 15 puzzle.
How a young celebrity became one of the first female astronomers at Caltech, befriended Richard Feynman, and ended up the world’s foremost chronicler of the science of the night sky.
Activity in the visual cortex and other sensory areas is dominated by signals about body movements, down to little tics and twitches. Scientists are now rethinking how they study and conceive of perception.
By ignoring their goals, evolutionary algorithms have solved longstanding challenges in artificial intelligence.
Looking for answers in infinite space is hard. High school math can help narrow your search.
Most every cosmologist believes the universe is flat. A new analysis argues that it’s closed.
New work on the problem of “scissors congruence” explains when it’s possible to slice up one shape and reassemble it as another.
Singing experiments with residents of the Bolivian rainforest demonstrate how biology and experience shape the way we hear music.
A close look at fundamental symmetries has exposed hidden patterns in the universe. Physicists think that those same symmetries may also reveal time’s original secret.