Originally devised as a rigorous means of counting holes, homology provides a scaffolding for mathematical ideas, allowing for a new way to analyze the shapes within data.

Trannoscription factors that act throughout the genome can arise from mashups of transposable elements inserted into established genes.

A mathematical shortcut for analyzing black hole collisions works even in cases where it shouldn’t. As astronomers use it to search for new classes of hidden black holes, others wonder: Why?

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

Studies of sleep are usually neurological. But some of nature’s simplest animals suggest that sleep evolved for metabolic reasons, long before brains even existed.

A pair of mathematicians solved a legendary question about the proportion of vertices in a graph with an odd number of connections.

Supermassive black holes emit jets of white-hot plasma that stretch thousands of light-years across the cosmos. For the first time, researchers have identified what’s creating these jets.

New work suggests that the radiolytic splitting of water supports giant subsurface ecosystems of life on Earth — and could do it elsewhere, too.

Hilbert’s 12th problem asked for novel analogues of the roots of unity, the building blocks for certain number systems. Now, over 100 years later, two mathematicians have produced them.

Groundbreaking results show that neutron stars of different masses may have the same size — upending astrophysical models.

Jordan Ellenberg enjoys studying — and writing about — the mathematics underlying everyday phenomena.

Playing with numbers can lead to deep mathematical and scientific insights.

Scientists have begun to decipher the subtle signs that reveal how explosive a volcanic eruption is going to be.

In some symbiotic partnerships, an RNA-based mechanism may sabotage the growth of greedy hosts.

A new proof establishes the boundary at which a shape becomes so corrugated, it can be crushed.

Scientists have long struggled to understand how common planets form. A new supercomputer simulation shows that the missing ingredient may be magnetism.

The discovery of a gene shared by two unrelated species of fish is the latest evidence that horizontal gene transfers occur surprisingly often in vertebrates.

The accelerating effort to understand the mathematics of quantum field theory will have profound consequences for both math and physics.

Superconductivity has been discovered in graphene devices without any twists, suggesting the form of superconductivity in the material might be mundane after all.

Federica Coppari uses the world’s most powerful laser to recreate the cores of distant worlds.