Features

The idea of ‘biological agency’ — that life devises its own goals and behaves accordingly — complicates our understanding of what it means to be alive. But does it serve a scientific purpose?

Our genetic heritage is not a blueprint or an algorithm, as many biologists have imagined, but something else entirely.

With automated proof-checkers, a problem can be broken up into small chunks, solved bit-by-bit, then reassembled with confidence that every piece is correct. For some, this heralds a new area in mathematical research.

In the 1960s, worm-training experiments and their strange implications captivated the nation. Columnist Claire L. Evans follows the neuroscientists who attempted to recapture the magic.

In holographic theories, physicists may have traced the pliability of space-time to its quantum roots: a measure of quantumness known as “magic.”

By replacing the most fundamental concept in topology, Peter Scholze and Dustin Clausen are taking the first step in a far bigger program to understand why numbers behave the way they do.

Ultrafinitism, a philosophy that rejects the infinite, has long been dismissed as mathematical heresy. But it is also producing new insights in math and beyond.

Dozens of new discoveries reveal that defenses evolved by bacteria and viruses billions of years ago still define our own innate immune system.

AI is being used to prove new results at a rapid pace. Mathematicians think this is just the beginning.