Some neighborhoods in the Milky Way may be better suited for making habitable planets than others.

The Joy of Why podcast returns for a third season, with two co-hosts, 24 brilliant guests and 24 all-new episodes.

If Anna beats Benji in a game and Benji beats Carl, will Anna beat Carl?

For decades, a small group of mathematicians has patiently unraveled the mystery of what was once math’s most popular picture. Their story shows how technology transforms even the most abstract mathematical landscapes.

Integer linear programming can help find the answer to a variety of real-world problems. Now researchers have found a much faster way to do it.

Two mathematicians have shown that origami can, in principle, be used to perform any possible computation.

A mutant seedling revealed how plant tissues scatter incoming light, allowing plants to sense its direction and move toward it.

Terence Tao, who has been called the “Mozart of Mathematics,” wrote an essay in 2007 about the common ingredients in “good” mathematical research. In this episode, the Fields Medalist joins Steven Strogatz to revisit the topic.

The Reykjanes Peninsula has entered a new volcanic era. Innovative efforts to map and monitor the subterranean magma are saving lives.

The pathbreaking geneticist Cassandra Extavour pursues the secrets of multicellular life while balancing careers in both science and singing.

This past October, dozens of mathematicians gathered in Pasadena to create the third version of “Kirby’s list” — a compendium of the most important unsolved problems in the field.

Two researchers have proved that Penrose tilings, famous patterns that never repeat, are mathematically equivalent to a kind of quantum error correction.

A series of advances seemed to promise the impossible: the existence of quantum states that would never, ever fall into disarray. But physicists are now discovering that the pull of disorder may not be so easily overcome.

Simple rules in simple settings continue to puzzle mathematicians, even as they devise intricate tools to analyze them.

Erasing key information during training results in machine learning models that can learn new languages faster and more easily.

Time is all around us: in the language we use, in the memories we revisit and in our predictions of the future. But what exactly is it? The physicist and Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek joins Steve Strogatz to discuss the fundamental hallmarks of time.

The visual systems of an obscure group of mollusks provide a rare natural example of path-dependent evolution, in which a critical fork in the creatures’ past determined their evolutionary futures.

By mapping the largest structures in the universe in X-rays, cosmologists have found striking agreement with their standard theoretical model of how the universe evolves.

Mathematicians are working to fully explain unusual behaviors uncovered using artificial intelligence.

How did cells evolve a process to end their own lives? Recent research suggests that apoptosis, a form of programmed cell death, first arose billions of years ago in bacteria with a primitive sociality.

By eliminating a hidden inefficiency, computer scientists have come up with a new way to multiply large matrices that’s faster than ever.