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.

Knots can help unlock the biochemistry of DNA or the geometry of three-dimensional spaces. Steven Strogatz explores these mysteries with Colin Adams and Lisa Piccirillo.

Knots can help unlock the biochemistry of DNA or the geometry of three-dimensional spaces. Steven Strogatz explores these mysteries with Colin Adams and Lisa Piccirillo.

A new analysis of W bosons suggests these particles are significantly heavier than predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics.

Learn the magic and math of how to win games when your opponent goes first.

Life could use a more expansive genetic code in theory, but new work shows that improving on three-letter codons would be a challenge.

For centuries, mathematicians have tried to prove that Euler’s fluid equations can produce nonsensical answers. A new approach to machine learning has researchers betting that “blowup” is near.

The Tonga eruption in January was “basically like Krakatoa 2.” This time, geophysicists could explain the tiny tsunamis that cropped up all over the planet, solving a 139-year-old mystery about Tonga’s predecessor.

Language processing programs are notoriously hard to interpret, but smaller versions can provide important insights into how they work.