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Latest Articles
Why Are Rivers So Mathematical?
A simple scaling law brings order to the chaos of flowing water, rock, and sediment. New findings have extended the law even further.
Neutrinos From Deep Inside Earth Provide a New Picture of the Mantle
A global constellation of neutrino detectors is creating a never-before-seen view of the radioactive elements that power Earth’s tectonic heat engine.
How Does Touch Lead To Pain Or Pleasure?
Neuroscientist Ishmail Abdus-Saboor discusses efforts to understand how skin contact can be painful or pleasurable, and what touch-obsessed naked mole rats might teach us about human social behavior.
Corals Spin Tiny Vortices to Get Oxygen, but Not if It’s Too Hot
New research is helping biologists understand how an overlooked aspect of coral physiology may affect their fate under climate change.
Why the Legendary Erdős Problems Are Falling to AI
AI’s greatest mathematical successes have come from answers to problems posed by a mid-20th century iconoclast. By examining what makes the Erdős problems unique, mathematicians are trying to understand how AI might change the rest of math.
Is AI Reasoning Right for the Wrong Reasons?
The idea that artificial intelligence can “reason” is more intuitive than ever. But intuitions can be wrong, and the science is far from settled.
Physicists Solve a Big Quantum Mystery. Now, Old Results Don’t Add Up.
New calculations seem to have put a 25-year-old particle physics puzzle to rest. But they’ve also created a clash with other experimental results.
A New Way That a Cow’s Inner World Shapes Earth’s Atmosphere
An organelle discovered inside a microbe inside a cow’s gut helps explain how livestock burps contribute to warming our planet.
How Fast Is the Universe Really Expanding?
One of the most contested issues in astrophysics is our understanding of the Universe’s expansion. Adam Riess discusses why there is disagreement and what might resolve it.