Explainers

Several real-life pathogens can change a host’s behavior against their will. Here’s what we know about these zombie-like infections.

“Liquid” neural nets, based on a worm’s nervous system, can transform their underlying algorithms on the fly, giving them unprecedented speed and adaptability.

Richard Feynman’s path integral is both a powerful prediction machine and a philosophy about how the world is. But physicists are still struggling to figure out how to use it, and what it means.

Diffusion models generate incredible images by learning to reverse the process that, among other things, causes ink to spread through water.

A new radiation-based mechanism adds to the ways that amino acids could have been made in space and brought to the young Earth.

Lattice cryptography promises to protect secrets from the attacks of far-future quantum computers.

A growing catalog of huge but dim galaxies such as Dragonfly 44 is forcing astronomers to invent new theories of galactic evolution.

Zero-knowledge proofs allow researchers to prove their knowledge without divulging the knowledge itself.

Even though we’ve learned a lot about this relative of smallpox, some mysteries remain due to a lack of political will.