Archive

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.

A group of mathematicians has shown that at critical moments, a symmetry called rotational invariance is a universal property across many physical systems.

A temporal pattern of activity observed in human brains may explain how we can learn so quickly.

Mitochondria appear to communicate and cooperate with one another, both within and between cells. Biologists are only just beginning to understand how and why.

Other diseases with long-term symptoms can help us understand how COVID can affect us long after the virus itself is gone.

These ultrabright flashes have recently been tracked for days, upending ideas about the cataclysms that create them.

In this month’s puzzle, math is a question of life or death.

Genomic surveillance of the SARS-CoV-2 virus can help control the current pandemic and prevent future ones. But the process is marred by insufficient data and geographic inequities.

Even in an incomplete state, quantum field theory is the most successful physical theory ever discovered. Nathan Seiberg, one of its leading architects, talks about the gaps in QFT and how mathematicians could fill them.