Ten years ago, researchers proved that adding full memory can theoretically aid computation. They’re just now beginning to ...

Quantum calculations amount to sophisticated estimates. But in 1931, Hans Bethe intuited precisely how a chain of particles ...

A young computer scientist and two colleagues show that searches within data structures called hash tables can be much faster ...

A new proof reveals the answer to the decades-old “moving sofa” problem. It highlights how even the simplest optimization problems can have counterintuitive answers. If you’ve ever moved into a new ...

Richard Green is a freelance mathematics writer and a professor of mathematics at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has a degree from the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. from the University ...

Is the universe flat and infinite, or something more complex? We can’t say for sure, but a new search strategy is mapping out the subtle signals that could reveal if the universe has a shape.

By treating DNA as a language, Brian Hie’s “ChatGPT for genomes” could pick up patterns that humans can’t see, accelerating ...

Under the sea ice during the Arctic’s pitch-black polar night, cells power photosynthesis on the lowest light levels ever observed in nature. Most of life’s engines run on sunlight. Photons filter ...

Is the universe infinite, Aristotle asked in 350 BCE, “or is this an impossibility? The decision … is … all-important to our search for the truth.” The Greek ...