While we sleep, one kind of slow brain wave helps to reinforce memories, but a competing wave weakens them.

How do magnetars get so magnetic? A study of stellar explosions shows that the long-accepted theory might be wrong.

A close look at fundamental symmetries has exposed hidden patterns in the universe. Physicists think that those same symmetries may also reveal time’s original

Singing experiments with residents of the Bolivian rainforest demonstrate how biology and experience shape the way we hear music.

New work on the problem of “scissors congruence” explains when it’s possible to slice up one shape and reassemble it as another.

Most every cosmologist believes the universe is flat. A new analysis argues that it’s closed.

Looking for answers in infinite space is hard. High school math can help narrow your search.

By ignoring their goals, evolutionary algorithms have solved longstanding challenges in artificial intelligence.

Activity in the visual cortex and other sensory areas is dominated by signals about body movements, down to little tics and twitches. Scientists are now rethinking how they study and conceive of perception.

How a young celebrity became one of the first female astronomers at Caltech, befriended Richard Feynman, and ended up the world’s foremost chronicler of the science of the night sky.

Virginia Trimble discusses how astronomy has changed over the course of her half-century career. Read the full interview here: https://www.quantamagazine.org...

Mathematicians have figured out exactly how many moves it takes to randomize a 15 puzzle.

Three physicists stumbled across an unexpected relationship between some of the most ubiquitous objects in math.

Taste and smell receptors in unexpected organs monitor the state of the body’s natural microbial health and raise an alarm over invading parasites.

After millions of games, machine learning algorithms found creative solutions and unexpected new strategies that could transfer to the real world.

Calculations involving a higher dimension are guiding physicists toward a misstep in Stephen Hawking’s legendary black hole analysis.

Barbara Liskov pioneered the modern approach to writing code. She warns that the challenges facing computer science today can’t be overcome with good design alone.

A surprisingly youthful estimate of the age of the rings has stirred a backlash.

Readers’ modifications of a bean machine showed how deterministic laws are capable of producing random-seeming behavior.

We finally know how big a set of numbers can get before it has to contain a pattern known as a “polynomial progression.”

New research makes a molecular connection between the brain and aging — and shows that overactive neurons can shorten life span.