By proving a broader version of Hilbert’s famous 10th problem, two groups of mathematicians have expanded the realm of ...

Under the sea ice during the Arctic’s pitch-black polar night, cells power photosynthesis on the lowest light levels ever ...

Is the universe flat and infinite, or something more complex? We can’t say for sure, but a new search strategy is mapping out ...

Recent results show that large language models struggle with compositional tasks, suggesting a hard limit to their abilities.

The library sorting problem is used across computer science for organizing far more than just books. A new solution is less ...

In the late 19th century, Karl Weierstrass invented a fractal-like function that was decried as nothing less than a ...

Learning a language can’t be that hard — every baby in the world manages to do it in a few years. Figuring out how the process works is another story. Linguists have devised elaborate theories to ...

The mathematician and author Steven Strogatz and the astrophysicist and author Janna Levin interview leading researchers about the great scientific and mathematical questions of our time.

It’s surprisingly difficult to prove one of the most basic properties of a number: whether it can be written as a fraction. A broad new method can help settle this ancient question. In June 1978, the ...