Archive

Two mathematicians have proved a long-standing conjecture that is a step on the way toward finding the worst shape for packing the plane.

Three years ago, Google’s AlphaFold pulled off the biggest artificial intelligence breakthrough in science to date, accelerating molecular research and kindling deep questions about why we do science.

Computational complexity theorists have discovered a surprising new way to understand what makes certain problems hard.

Useful mathematical concepts, like the number line, can linger for millennia before they are rigorously defined.

How are scientists able to crack fundamental questions about nature and life? How does math make the complex cosmos understandable? In this episode, the physicist Nigel Goldenfeld and co-host Steven Strogatz explore the deep foundations of the scientific process.

European beech trees more than 1,500 kilometers apart all drop their fruit at the same time in a grand synchronization event now linked to the summer solstice.

Making ice requires more than subzero temperatures. The unpredictable process takes microscopic scaffolding, random jiggling and often a little bit of bacteria.

The evolutionarily ancient part of the brain that controls breathing and heart rate also regulates the immune system — a discovery about the brain-body axis made by experts on taste.

Computer scientist Lance Fortnow writes that by embracing the computations that surround us, we can begin to understand and tame our seemingly random world.