Ice comes in more forms than what you’ll find in a freezer or a glacier. Since 1900, scientists have observed more than 20 ...

Neurons that fire together, wire together” is not the full story. A novel mechanism explains how the brain can learn across ...

With a newly discovered mathematical tool, researchers are hoping to gain unprecedented insight into the structure of complex ...

The bacterial flagellar motor is finally understood after 50 years. In its workings, columnist Natalie Wolchover finds the ...

Some quantum cryptographers want to find ways to keep messages secret even if the rules of quantum mechanics don’t hold. The ...

Those changes will be contested, in math as in other academic disciplines wrestling with AI’s impact. As AI models become a ...

Some 30 years ago, the mathematician Peter Shor took a niche physics project — the dream of building a computer based on the counterintuitive rules of quantum mechanics — and shook the world. Shor ...

Around the world, volcanologists are following the path of magma as it travels between connected volcanoes, in an effort that could lead to improved eruption forecasts. In the summer of 1912, word ...

There’s a moment, just before the tight mass of cells that is a developing mouse embryo implants itself in the womb, that it all comes apart. Hundreds of tiny fluid-filled bubbles expand between each ...

Intuition breaks down once we’re dealing with the endless. To begin with: Some infinities are bigger than others.

In October 2008, Chris Bretherton lifted off from the coast of northern Chile in a C-130 turboprop plane. It was too dark to see the sandy hills of the Atacama Desert below, but the darkness suited ...