Archive

Investigations of the simplest possible clocks have revealed their fundamental limitations — as well as insights into the nature of time itself.

New work shows that neurons and other brain cells use DNA double-strand breaks, often associated with cancer, neurodegeneration and aging, to quickly express genes related to learning and memory.

One of the strangest results in mathematics explains how it’s possible to turn one sphere into two identical copies, simply by rearranging its pieces.

How readers used their geometry skills to survive a dangerous puzzle.

Familiar categories of mental functions such as perception, memory and attention reflect our experience of ourselves, but they are misleading about how the brain works. More revealing approaches are emerging.

The five-decade-old paradox — long thought key to linking quantum theory with Einstein’s theory of gravity — is falling to a new generation of thinkers. Netta Engelhardt is leading the way.

Researchers are turning to the mathematics of higher-order interactions to better model the complex connections within their data.

By showing that even large objects can exhibit bizarre quantum behaviors, physicists hope to illuminate the mystery of quantum collapse, identify the quantum nature of gravity, and perhaps even make Schrödinger’s cat a reality.

The most widely used technique for finding the largest or smallest values of a math function turns out to be a fundamentally difficult computational problem.