By showing that even large objects can exhibit bizarre quantum behaviors, physicists hope to illuminate the mystery of quantum collapse, identify the quantum nature of gravity, and perhaps even make…

Researchers are turning to the mathematics of higher-order interactions to better model the complex connections within their data.

The five-decade-old paradox — long thought key to linking quantum theory with Einstein’s theory of gravity — is falling to a new generation of thinkers. Netta Engelhardt is leading the way.

Familiar categories of mental functions such as perception, memory and attention reflect our experience of ourselves, but they are misleading about how the brain works. More revealing approaches are…

How readers used their geometry skills to survive a dangerous puzzle.

One of the strangest results in mathematics explains how it’s possible to turn one sphere into two identical copies, simply by rearranging its pieces.

New work shows that neurons and other brain cells use DNA double-strand breaks, often associated with cancer, neurodegeneration and aging, to quickly express genes related to learning and memory.

Investigations of the simplest possible clocks have revealed their fundamental limitations — as well as insights into the nature of time itself.

Genomes hold immense quantities of noncoding DNA. Some is essential for life, some seems useless, and some of it has its own agenda.

Computational neuroscientists taught an artificial neural network to imitate a biological neuron. The result offers a new way to think about the complexity of single brain cells.

For over two decades, physicists have pondered how the fabric of space-time may emerge from some kind of quantum entanglement. In Monika Schleier-Smith’s lab at Stanford University…

Driven by her fascination with highly repetitive, hard-to-read parts of our DNA, Karen Miga led a coalition of researchers to finish sequencing the human genome after almost two decades.

Michael Freedman’s momentous 1981 proof of the four-dimensional Poincaré conjecture was on the verge of being lost. The editors of a new book are trying to save it.

The concept of dimension seems simple enough, but mathematicians struggled for centuries to precisely define and understand it.

Legend says the Chinese military once used a mathematical ruse to conceal its troop numbers. The technique relates to many deep areas of modern math research.

Deep in the mantle, a branching plume of intensely hot material appears to be the engine powering vast volcanic activity.

The molecular signaling systems of complex cells are nothing like simple electronic circuits. The logic governing their operation is riotously complex — but it has advantages.

A painstaking study of wing morphology shows both the striking uniformity of individuals in a species and a subtle pattern of linked variations that evolution can exploit.

The n-queens problem is about finding how many different ways queens can be placed on a chessboard so that none attack each other. A mathematician has now all but solved it.

Researchers have discovered that environments favoring clumpy growth are all that’s needed to quickly transform single-celled yeast into complex multicellular organisms.

Solutions to the simplest polynomial equations — called “roots of unity” — have an elegant structure that mathematicians still use to study some of math’s greatest open questions.