A new computer program fashioned after artificial intelligence systems like AlphaGo has solved several open problems in combinatorics and graph theory.

The discovery that short peptides can form spontaneously on cosmic dust hints at more of a role for them in the earliest stages of life’s origin, on Earth or elsewhere.

A new proof significantly strengthens a decades-old result about the ubiquity of ways to represent whole numbers as sums of unit fractions.

A simple algorithm that revolutionizes how neural networks approach language is now taking on image classification as well. It may not stop there.

Dwarf galaxies weren’t supposed to have big black holes. Their surprise discovery has revealed clues about how the universe’s biggest black holes could have formed.

Traditional algorithms power complicated computational tools like machine learning. A new approach, called algorithms with predictions, uses the power of machine learning to improve algorithms.

An experiment conducted on hybrid matter-antimatter atoms has defied researchers’ expectations.

Biomechanical interactions, rather than neurons, control the movements of one of the simplest animals. The discovery offers a glimpse into how animal behavior worked before neurons evolved.

The noted mathematician and author Steven Strogatz explains how the conversations with experts in his new Quanta Magazine podcast address his lifelong fascination with timeless mysteries.

Physicists are devising clever new ways to exploit the extreme sensitivity of gravitational wave detectors like LIGO. But so far, they’ve seen no signs of exotica.

Dopamine, a neurochemical often associated with reward behavior, also seems to help organize precisely when the brain initiates movements. It’s the latest revelation about the power of neuromodulators.

The American mathematician invented entire new ways to understand shapes and spaces.

The reasons why sleep is so vital often hide in unexpected parts of the body, as host Steven Strogatz discovers in conversations with researchers Dragana Rogulja and Alex Keene.

Play this simple math game with your friends to gain insights into fundamental principles of graph theory.

With self-generated gradients of chemicals and physical tension, cells in the body steer themselves to vital destinations.

Physicists are using quantum math to understand what happens when black holes collide. In a surprise, they’ve shown that a single particle can describe a collision’s entire gravitational wave.

Lillian Pierce wants to transform access to the world of mathematics, while making headway on problems that bridge the discrete and continuous.

Thanks to the power of fluctuation relations, physicists are taking the second law of thermodynamics to settings once thought impossible.

The result could help researchers answer a larger question about flattening objects from the fourth dimension to the third dimension.

The optical properties of mitochondrial bundles in the retina may improve how efficiently the eye captures light.

The existence of secure cryptography depends on one of the oldest questions in computational complexity.