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Today’s powerful but little-understood artificial intelligence breakthroughs echo past examples of unexpected scientific progress.

Solutions to the simplest polynomial equations — called “roots of unity” — have an elegant structure that mathematicians still use to study some of math’s greatest open questions.

The concept of dimension seems simple enough, but mathematicians struggled for centuries to precisely define and understand it.

When Steven Weinberg died last month, the world lost one of its most profound thinkers.

Using high school algebra and geometry, and knowing just one rational point on a circle or elliptic curve, we can locate infinitely many others.

Other diseases with long-term symptoms can help us understand how COVID can affect us long after the virus itself is gone.

To understand what quantum computers can do — and what they can’t — avoid falling for overly simple explanations.

Advances in brain-computer interface technology are impressive, but we’re not close to anything resembling mind control.

Math teachers have stymied students for hundreds of years by sticking goats in strangely shaped fields. Learn why one grazing goat problem has stumped mathematicians for more than a century.