explainers

His incompleteness theorems destroyed the search for a mathematical theory of everything. Nearly a century later, we’re still coming to grips with the consequences.

One hundred years after it was proposed, the Ising model is used to understand everything from magnets to brains.

We asked four physicists why gravity stands out among the forces of nature. We got four different answers.

Representation theory was initially dismissed. Today, it’s central to much of mathematics.

To distinguish between fundamentally different objects, mathematicians turn to invariants that encode the objects’ essential features.

Mathematicians try to figure out when problems can be solved using current knowledge — and when they have to chart a new path instead.

As COVID-19 cases continue to increase, our extensive knowledge of other coronaviruses informs our understanding.

And why is the black hole at the center of our own galaxy so dim?

Zoonotic diseases like influenza and many coronaviruses start out in animals, but their biological machinery often enables them to jump to humans.