By extending the scope of the key insight behind Fermat’s Last Theorem, four mathematicians have made great strides toward ...

Reversible programs run backward as easily as they run forward, saving energy in theory. After decades of research, they may ...

Manu Prakash works on the world’s most urgent problems and seemingly frivolous questions at the same time. They add up to a ...

Mathematicians soon hypothesized that as your set gets bigger, the biggest sum-free subsets will get much larger than N /3.

One computer scientist’s “stunning” proof is the first progress in 50 years on one of the most famous questions in computer ...

Changes in the number, shape, efficiency and interconnectedness of organelles in the cells of flight muscles provide extra ...

Samir Patel joined Quanta Magazine as Editor in Chief in 2024. He previously served in the same position at Atlas Obscura, and was also deputy editor of Archaeology Magazine. As a science writer ...

It can be tempting to assume that your intuitions about three-dimensional space carry over to higher-dimensional realms. After all, adding another dimension simply creates a new direction to move ...

Since the start of the 20th century, the heart of mathematics has been the proof — a rigorous, logical argument for whether a given statement is true or false. Mathematicians’ careers are measured by ...

A new suggestion that complexity increases over time, not just in living organisms but in the nonliving world, promises to rewrite notions of time and evolution. In 1950 the Italian physicist Enrico ...

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 ...