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Mathematicians Build Long-Awaited Graph Sandwich

The proof of a decades-old conjecture has given researchers a new way to understand complex networks.

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Ctenophores Aren’t Just Beautiful. They’re Biological Wonders.

Comb jellies are helping answer fundamental questions in biology, from how the earliest nervous systems evolved to how bioluminescence works.

Black Holes or Black Hole Stars? Astronomers Spar Over Webb Telescope’s ‘Little Red Dots.’

The James Webb Space Telescope spots mysterious “little red dots” everywhere. A bold new theory suggests they’re suns dozens of times larger than our entire solar system.

Why Do These Fossil Shells Flip Their Spirals Every Few Millennia?

The mystery of the flipping foraminifera may conceal a rarely observed evolutionary process playing out across the planet.

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.

An illustration depicting stylized galaxies, each containing a different mathematical diagram or notation, connected by tubes meant to resemble wormholes.

AI Has Solved One of Math’s $1 Million Millennium Prize Problems

Mathematicians at OpenAI showed that the Navier-Stokes equations, which describe how fluids flow, can sometimes “blow up.” But the massive result is not without controversy.

Q&A

In an Age of AI, a Physicist Seeks What Endures

Sarah Demers, chair of the physics department at Yale University, sees the potential for large language models to both help and harm her field.

Genome Duplication Is a Radical Evolutionary Gamble

By doubling their entire genome, organisms can evolve extremely rapidly — or they can lose it all. New studies reveal how to survive the high-risk, high-reward evolutionary event.

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The Navier-Stokes Equations, Explained

Emily Buder/Quanta Magazine and Emily Zhang

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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.

00:00 / 29:38

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How Can Infinity Come in Many Sizes?

Intuition breaks down once we’re dealing with the endless. To begin with: Some infinities are bigger than others.

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