explainers

Symplectic geometry is a relatively new field with implications for much of modern mathematics. Here’s what it’s all about.

Why do mathematicians enjoy proving the same results in different ways?

Earth’s climate has fluctuated through deep time, pushed by these 10 different causes. Here’s how each compares with modern climate change.

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.