The bacterial flagellar motor is finally understood after 50 years. In its workings, columnist Natalie Wolchover finds the ...

Some quantum cryptographers want to find ways to keep messages secret even if the rules of quantum mechanics don’t hold. The ...

With a newly discovered mathematical tool, researchers are hoping to gain unprecedented insight into the structure of complex ...

Dozens of new discoveries reveal that defenses evolved by bacteria and viruses billions of years ago still define our own ...

Our tales of AI developing the will to survive, commandeer resources, and manipulate people say more about us than they do ...

In a year filled with sweet new observations in astronomy and tantalizing breakthroughs in condensed matter physics, the brand-new space telescope takes the cake.

Those changes will be contested, in math as in other academic disciplines wrestling with AI’s impact. As AI models become a ...

Particle physicists in search of the next theory of reality are consulting a mathematical structure that they know will never fail: a table of possibilities known as the S-matrix. Matt von Hippel is a ...

Physicists spotted a “terribly exciting” new black hole, doubled down on weakening dark energy, and debated the meaning of quantum mechanics.

“Anomalous” heat flow, which at first appears to violate the second law of thermodynamics, gives physicists a way to detect quantum entanglement without destroying it. Quantum Scientists Have Built a ...

The biochemist Nick Lane thinks life first evolved in hydrothermal vents where precursors of metabolism appeared before genetic information. His ideas could lead us to think differently about aging ...

Some quantum cryptographers want to find ways to keep messages secret even if the rules of quantum mechanics don’t hold. The recently rediscovered idea of quantum jamming complicates things. The ...