Latest Articles
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 Ends of the Earth
Building an accurate model of Earth’s climate requires a lot of data. Photography reveals the extreme efforts scientists have undertaken to measure gases, glaciers, clouds and more.
How Smell Guides Our Inner World
A better understanding of human smell is emerging as scientists interrogate its fundamental elements: the odor molecules that enter your nose and the individual neurons that translate them into perception in your brain.
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.
AI Is Nothing Like a Brain, and That’s OK
The brain’s astounding cellular diversity and networked complexity could show how to make AI better.
Intelligence Evolved at Least Twice in Vertebrate Animals
Complex neural pathways likely arose independently in birds and mammals, suggesting that vertebrates evolved intelligence multiple times.
Concept Cells Help Your Brain Abstract Information and Build Memories
Individual cells in the brain light up for specific ideas. These concept neurons, once known as “Jennifer Aniston cells,” help us think, imagine and remember episodes from our lives.
Fish Have a Brain Microbiome. Could Humans Have One Too?
The discovery that other vertebrates have healthy, microbial brains is fueling the still controversial possibility that we might have them as well.
How the Human Brain Contends With the Strangeness of Zero
Zero, which was invented late in history, is special among numbers. New studies are uncovering how the brain creates something out of nothing.