Decades after the landmark proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem, ideas abound for how to make it even more reliable. But such efforts reflect a deep misunderstanding of what makes the proof so important.

Immunologists confirm an old hunch: T-cells identify what belongs in the body by timing how long they can bind to it.

An experiment caught a quantum system in the middle of a jump — something the originators of quantum mechanics assumed was impossible.

A recent challenge to Stephen Hawking’s biggest idea — about how the universe might have come from nothing — has cosmologists choosing sides.

New experimental results simultaneously advance and challenge the theory that the brain’s network of neurons balances on the knife-edge between two phases.

Astronomers have discovered a complex planetary system still swirling into existence.

Contrary to popular belief, bacteria have organelles too. Scientists are now studying them for insights into how complex cells evolved.

Amie Wilkinson searches for exotic examples of the mathematical structures that describe change.

In just three pages, a Russian mathematician has presented a better way to color certain types of networks than many experts thought possible.

Neven’s law states that quantum computers are improving at a “doubly exponential” rate. If it holds, quantum supremacy is around the corner.

Pure, verifiable randomness is hard to come by. Two proposals show how to make quantum computers into randomness factories.

What do moiré patterns seen in optics, art, photography and color printing have to do with superconducting layers of graphene?

Researchers struggle to incorporate ongoing evolutionary discoveries into an animal classification scheme older than Darwin.

Opinions differ about what recent measurements of a sound-trapping fluid reveal about light-trapping black holes.

Lurking behind Einstein’s theory of gravity and our modern understanding of particle physics is the deceptively simple idea of symmetry. But physicists are beginning to question whether focusing on symmetry is still as productive as it once was.

Lee Smolin’s radical idea to reimagine how we view the universe.

To researchers’ surprise, deep learning vision algorithms often fail at classifying images because they mostly take cues from textures, not shapes.

Mathematicians have proved that a random process applied to a random surface will yield consistent patterns.

A recent test has confirmed the predictions of quantum trajectory theory.

The discovery that apparently dead cells can sometimes resurrect themselves has researchers exploring how far they can push the point of no return.

Randomness would seem to make a mathematical statement harder to prove. In fact, it often does the opposite.