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.

Carolyn Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022 for their development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.

The decades-old Sullivan’s conjecture, about the best way to minimize the surface area of a bubble cluster, was thought to be out of reach for three bubbles and up — until a new breakthrough result.

Efforts to build a better digital “nose” suggest that our perception of scents reflects both the structure of aromatic molecules and the metabolic processes that make them.

Zero-knowledge proofs allow researchers to prove their knowledge without divulging the knowledge itself.

Letting human brain organoids grow in animal brains could be an ethical new option for experimental studies of neurological disorders.

With stem cell technology and lab-grown brain organoids, Sergiu Paşca seeks the causes of autism and other neuropsychiatric conditions.

In his senior year of high school, Daniel Larsen proved a key theorem about Carmichael numbers — strange entities that mimic the primes. “It would be a paper that any mathematician would be really proud to have written,” said one mathematician.

Recent explorations of unique geometric worlds reveal perplexing patterns, including the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio.