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.

Animals sculpt the optical properties of their tissues at the nanoscale to give themselves “structural colors.” New work is piecing together how they do it.

In three towering papers, a team of mathematicians has worked out the details of Liouville quantum field theory, a two-dimensional model of quantum gravity.

Researchers have finally seen how some smell receptors bind to odor molecules. The work yields new insights into one of the most mysterious and versatile senses.

Jupiter and Saturn should be freezing cold. Instead, they’re hot. Researchers now know why.

For all their triumphs, AI systems can’t seem to generalize the concepts of “same” and “different.” Without that, researchers worry, the quest to create truly intelligent machines may be hopeless.

Even in an incomplete state, quantum field theory is the most successful physical theory ever discovered. Nathan Seiberg, one of its leading architects, talks about the gaps in QFT and how…

Genomic surveillance of the SARS-CoV-2 virus can help control the current pandemic and prevent future ones. But the process is marred by insufficient data and geographic inequities.

In this month’s puzzle, math is a question of life or death.

These ultrabright flashes have recently been tracked for days, upending ideas about the cataclysms that create them.

Other diseases with long-term symptoms can help us understand how COVID can affect us long after the virus itself is gone.

Mitochondria appear to communicate and cooperate with one another, both within and between cells. Biologists are only just beginning to understand how and why.

A temporal pattern of activity observed in human brains for the first time may explain how we can learn so quickly.

A group of mathematicians has shown that at critical moments, a symmetry called rotational invariance is a universal property across many physical systems.

The DNA of some viruses doesn’t use the same four nucleotide bases found in all other life. New work shows how this exception is possible and hints that it could be more common than we think.

Melanie Mitchell has worked on digital minds for decades. She says they’ll never truly be like ours until they can make analogies.