Our galaxy’s stars keep a record of its past. By reading those stories, astronomers are learning more about how the Milky Way came to be — and about the galaxy we live in today.

The spatial intuition behind a three-point turn offers an on-ramp to a century-old geometry problem.

Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman have been awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries leading to mRNA vaccines, such as those that protect against COVID-19.

The development of attosecond pulses of light allowed researchers to explore the frame-by-frame movement of electrons.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to three researchers who harnessed the quantum behaviors of semiconductor nanocrystals.

To better understand how neural networks learn to simulate writing, researchers trained simpler versions on synthetic children’s stories.

Physicists have long suspected that hunks of metal could vibrate in a peculiar way that would be all but invisible. Now physicists have spotted these “demon modes.”

For decades, Carrie Partch has led pioneering structural research on the protein clockwork that keeps time for our circadian rhythm. Is time still on her side?

Mathematical logic and the code of computer programs are, in an exact way, mirror images of each other.

A new magnum opus posits the existence of a hidden mathematical link akin to the connection between electricity and magnetism.

Eugenio Calabi, who died on September 25, conceived of novel geometric objects that later became fundamental to string theory.

Shor’s algorithm will enable future quantum computers to factor large numbers quickly, undermining many online security protocols. Now a researcher has shown how to do it even faster.

For decades, researchers have debated whether brain cells called astrocytes can signal like neurons. Researchers recently published the best evidence yet that some astrocytes are part of the electrical conversation.

What makes a quantum computer more powerful than a classical computer? It’s a surprisingly subtle question that physicists are still grappling with, decades into the quantum age.

A new analysis of ancient sediments fills a gap in the fossil record — revealing a massive dynasty of ancient eukaryotes, which may have reigned for 800 million years and shaped the history of life of Earth.

Alexei Efros has spent his career learning how machines see differently from humans. Now he’s helping to bridge the gap.

After identifying interlocking symmetries in mammalian cells, scientists can describe some tissues as liquid crystals — an observation that lays the groundwork for a fluid-dynamic theory of how tissues move.

New work attacks a long-standing barrier to understanding how prime numbers are distributed.

The discovery earlier this year of the “hat” tile marked the culmination of hundreds of years of work into tiles and their symmetries.

New research in social bats raises the intriguing possibility that evolution can reprogram the brain’s “place cells,” which are typically associated with location, to encode all kinds of environmental information.

Quadratic reciprocity lurks around many corners in mathematics. By proving it, number theorists reimagined their whole field.