2018 in Review
Latest Articles
Is Mathematics Mostly Chaos or Mostly Order?
Two new notions of infinity challenge a long-standing plan to define the mathematical universe.
How AI Models Are Helping to Understand — and Control — the Brain
Martin Schrimpf is crafting bespoke AI models that can induce control over high-level brain activity.
The Ecosystem Dynamics That Can Make or Break an Invasion
By speedrunning ecosystems with microbes, researchers revealed intrinsic properties that may make a community susceptible to invasion.
Is Gravity Just Entropy Rising? Long-Shot Idea Gets Another Look.
A new argument explores how the growth of disorder could cause massive objects to move toward one another. Physicists are both interested and skeptical.
Does Form Really Shape Function?
From brain folds to insect architecture, L. Mahadevan explains how complex biological forms and behaviors emerge through the interplay of physical forces, environment and embodiment.
Epic Effort to Ground Physics in Math Opens Up the Secrets of Time
By mathematically proving how individual molecules create the complex motion of fluids, three mathematicians have illuminated why time can’t flow in reverse.
New Quantum Algorithm Factors Numbers With One Qubit
The catch: It would require the energy of a few medium-size stars.
First Map Made of a Solid’s Secret Quantum Geometry
Physicists recently mapped the hidden shape that underlies the quantum behaviors of a crystal, using a new method that’s expected to become ubiquitous.
How Much Energy Does It Take To Think?
Studies of neural metabolism reveal our brain’s effort to keep us alive and the evolutionary constraints that sculpted our most complex organ.