Anima Anandkumar wants computer scientists to move beyond the matrix, among other challenges.

Rethinking questions and chasing patterns led Newton to find the connection between curves and infinite sums.

The grainy image of a “super-Jupiter” is a sign of what’s to come as the telescope’s exoplanet observations ramp up.

What’s a message, really? Claude Shannon recognized that the elemental ingredient is surprise.

When the brain encodes memories as positive or negative, one molecule determines which way they will go.

Physicists have discovered that the ring of photons orbiting a black hole exhibits a special kind of symmetry, hinting at a deeper meaning.

Neural networks originally designed for language processing turn out to be great models of how our brains understand places.

Richard Rusczyk, founder of Art of Problem Solving, has a vision for bringing “joyous, beautiful math” — and problem-solving — to classrooms everywhere.

Robots can surpass the limitations on how high and far animals can jump, but their success only underscores nature’s ingenuity in making the most of what’s available.

A custom-built machine learning algorithm excels at the formidable task of predicting when a complex system is about to switch to a wildly different mode of behavior.

A simple geometric idea has been used to power advances in information theory, cryptography and even blockchain technology.

Field research suggests a new explanation for the synchronized flashing in fireflies and confirms that a novel form of “chimeric” synchrony occurs naturally.

A new atomic-scale experiment all but settles the origin of the strong form of superconductivity seen in cuprate crystals, confirming a 35-year-old theory.

A comprehensive mathematical framework treats wrinkling patterns as elegant solutions to geometric problems.

The past and the future are tightly linked in conventional quantum mechanics. Perhaps too tightly. A tweak to the theory could let quantum possibilities increase as space expands.

Of all the endless questions children and mathematicians have asked about infinity, one of the most fascinating has to do with its size.

Using inserted genetic circuitry, synthetic biologists controlled the growth of plant roots for the first time.

Even though we’ve learned a lot about this relative of smallpox, some mysteries remain due to a lack of political will.

Readers rescued a Star Trek crew from a probabilistic predicament armed only with the power of mathematical reasoning.

Svante Pääbo has been awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for studying our extinct ancestors’ DNA.

The quantum physicists Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger have won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics.