Using “refreshingly old” tools, mathematicians resolved a 50-year-old conjecture about how to categorize important functions called modular forms, with consequences for number theory and theoretical physics.

Arvind Narayanan uses quantitative methods to expose and correct the misuse of quantitative methods.

Cosmologists are using secondary signatures from the cosmic microwave background to map the universe’s hidden matter.

The most comprehensive survey of how we share our microbiomes suggests a new way of thinking about the risks of developing some diseases that aren’t usually considered contagious.

In a recent paper, two mathematicians showed that a particular pattern is unavoidable when fractions are categorized.

Large language models like ChatGPT are now big enough that they’ve started to display startling, unpredictable behaviors.

A survey of prehistoric bones reveals that T. rex and some of its cousins had more than one way to reach enormous sizes. Evolution may have preserved that variation in modern animals too.

For decades, mathematicians have been inching forward on a problem about which sets contain evenly spaced patterns of three numbers. Last month, two computer scientists blew past all of those results.

The American researcher was recognized for his central role in inventing, standardizing and commercializing the ubiquitous networking technology.

Can mathematics handle things that are essentially the same without being exactly equal? Category theorist Eugenia Cheng and host Steven Strogatz discuss the power and pleasures of abstraction.

Last fall, a team of physicists announced that they had teleported a qubit through a holographic wormhole in a quantum computer. Now another group suggests that’s not quite what happened.

Learn why the quadratic formula works and why quadratics are easier to solve than cubics.

The prize-winning geometer feels most fulfilled when exploring the fertile ground where constraint meets creation.

There once was a cosmic seed that sprouted the Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers have discovered its last surviving remnants.

The four-color problem is simple to explain, but its complex proof continues to be both celebrated and despised.

A novel type of “jumping gene” may explain why the genomes of complex cells aren’t all equally stuffed with noncoding sequences.

Unpredictability can help computer scientists solve otherwise intractable problems.

The surprisingly simple tile is the first single, connected tile that can fill the entire plane in a pattern that never repeats — and can’t be made to fill it in a repeating way.

The first large-scale comparison of mutation rates gives insights into how quickly species can evolve.

Should Covid-19 vaccines be judged by how well they prevent disease or how well they prevent death? Anna Durbin, a public health expert and vaccine researcher, talks with Steven Strogatz about the science behind vaccines.

In the math of particle physics, every calculation should result in infinity. Physicists get around this by just ignoring certain parts of the equations — an approach that provides approximate answers. But by using the techniques known as “resurgence,” researchers…