Features

One computer scientist’s “stunning” proof is the first progress in 50 years on one of the most famous questions in computer science.

Technology has forever served as science’s toolbox. But now that AI is being used to develop questions and methods as well, some scientists wonder what their role is going to become.

Mathematicians have started to prepare for a profound shift in what it means to do math.

Researchers in “natural language processing” tried to tame human language. Then came the transformer.

The brain’s astounding cellular diversity and networked complexity could show how to make AI better.

Every soft caress of wind, searing burn and seismic rumble is detected by our skin’s tangle of touch sensors. David Ginty has spent his career cataloging the neurons beneath everyday sensations.

A new suggestion that complexity increases over time, not just in living organisms but in the nonliving world, promises to rewrite notions of time and evolution.

In math and computer science, researchers have long understood that some questions are fundamentally unanswerable. Now physicists are exploring how even ordinary physical systems put hard limits on what we can predict, even in principle.

A new proof extends the work of the late Maryam Mirzakhani, cementing her legacy as a pioneer of alien mathematical realms.