Latest Articles
The Four-Color Theorem Gets a Rare New Proof
By revisiting the famous problem — which was controversially solved in the 1970s with the help of computers — mathematicians have gained important new insights into the nature of graphs.
What Can We Gain by Losing Infinity?
Ultrafinitism, a philosophy that rejects the infinite, has long been dismissed as mathematical heresy. But it is also producing new insights in math and beyond.
Why Math’s Final Axiom Proved So Controversial
Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory is so widely accepted that modern mathematicians hardly think about it. But believing in its core principles didn’t come easily.
How We Came To Know Earth
Climate science is the most significant scientific collaboration in history. This series from Quanta Magazine guides you through basic climate science — from quantum effects to ancient hothouses, from the math of tipping points to the audacity of climate models.
The Math of Catastrophe
Tipping points in our climate predictions are both wildly dramatic and wildly uncertain. Can mathematicians make them useful?
Is Mathematics Mostly Chaos or Mostly Order?
Two new notions of infinity challenge a long-standing plan to define the mathematical universe.
Science, Promise and Peril in the Age of AI
An exploration of how artificial intelligence is changing what it means to do science and math, and what it means to be a scientist.
What Happens When AI Starts To Ask the Questions?
Technology has forever served as science’s toolbox. But now that AI is being used to develop questions and methods as well, some scientists wonder what their role is going to become.
Mathematicians Discover New Way for Spheres to ‘Kiss’
A new proof marks the first progress in decades on important cases of the so-called kissing problem. Getting there meant doing away with traditional approaches.