Explainers

Proteins are often visualized as cascades of curled ribbons and twisted strings, which both reveal and conceal the mess of atoms that make up these impossibly complex molecules.

Tensors are used all over math and science to reveal hidden geometric truths. What are they?

Long explored but infrequently embraced, base 3 computing may yet find a home in cybersecurity.

You don’t need 0s and 1s to perform computations, and in some cases it’s better to avoid them.

Neuroscience research into people with aphantasia, who don’t experience mental imagery, is revealing how imagination works and demonstrating the sweeping variety in our subjective experiences.

One of the quantum fields that fills the universe is special because its default value seems poised to eventually change, changing everything.

These metaphorical gardens have become central objects in modern mathematics.

Neural networks and other forms of machine learning ultimately learn by trial and error, one improvement at a time.

Useful mathematical concepts, like the number line, can linger for millennia before they are rigorously defined.