2021 in Review
Latest Articles
How Do Fungi Keep the Planet Healthy?
Evolutionary biologist Toby Kiers explains how fungal networks in soil trade nutrients with plants, help keep carbon underground, and strike bargains without having a brain.
Triplet of ‘Ghostly’ Galaxies Hints at What Dark Matter Is — and Isn’t
A collision may have left these galaxies without dark matter. That spells trouble for alternative gravity theories.
Is ‘Attention’ the Essence of Intelligence?
A mathematical mechanism enables AI models to process language at scale, undergirding the current AI revolution. Our columnist asks: Why is attention the key?
How Does Life Unfold? A Landscape Metaphor Comes Into Its Own.
C.H. Waddington’s powerful image of embryonic stem cells specializing on a rolling landscape has captivated biologists since the 1950s. Experimental data is finally confirming, and complicating, his visionary ideas.
As AI Closed In on ‘Unique Games’ Proof, Researchers Raced to Beat the Machines
In the shadow of a rumored AI proof of one of the biggest problems in their field, three computer scientists rushed to publish their own milestone result.
Is AI the End of Math As We Know It?
Mathematicians are facing the sudden shift with grief, anger, and a desperate search for fresh ideas: “If we don’t adapt, there’s just no more math in 50 years.”
Sea Monkeys Show Scientists How To Rewrite a Rule of Turbulence
Scientists assumed that energy flows in only one direction in a turbulent system. What they didn’t know, until they looked closely at brine shrimp, was that a simple factor can reverse the flow.
What Does the Fourth Dimension Actually Look Like?
Maggie Miller explains why our intuition about three dimensions breaks down in four, and how she visualizes 4D spaces as a reel of three-dimensional snapshots.
Surprisingly Complex Waves Reveal the Brain’s Inner Workings
Unexpected patterns traveling across the human brain may be reorganizing its activity in real time.