Over hundreds of years, increasingly sophisticated instruments have revealed — and continue to reveal — the secrets of our star.
Earth’s largest volcanic system, hidden in mountain chains under the sea, has long been assumed to erupt only quietly. The ...
Evolutionary biologists are uncovering genomic mechanisms that allow populations to adapt quickly to different, hyperlocal ...
Grothendieck is revered in the world of math; outside of it, he’s known for his unusual life, if he’s known at all. But what ...
By replacing the most fundamental concept in topology, Peter Scholze and Dustin Clausen are taking the first step in a far ...
At 25, Kurt Gödel proved there can never be a mathematical “theory of everything.” Columnist Natalie Wolchover explores the ...
Descriptive set theorists study the niche mathematics of infinity. Now, they’ve shown that their problems can be rewritten in the concrete language of algorithms. The Quanta Newsletter ...
Astronomers are preparing for a new era of big-data astronomy, and results are already starting to arrive. Over the years, anticipation has built for the start of observations at the Vera C. Rubin ...
Ultrafinitism, a philosophy that rejects the infinite, has long been dismissed as mathematical heresy. But it is also producing new insights in math and beyond. His two theorems destroyed the search ...