C.H. Waddington’s powerful image of embryonic stem cells specializing on a rolling landscape has captivated biologists since the 1950s. Experimental data is finally confirming, and complicating, his ...

Scientists assumed that energy flows in only one direction in a turbulent system. What they didn’t know, until they looked closely at brine shrimp, was that a simple factor can reverse the flow.

The collective electrical activity of many neurons can be seen as waves propagating through the brain from one region to the ...

In my first months as a physics journalist nearly a decade ago, I kept running into an inscrutable string of characters: AdS/CFT. Thoroughly intimidated, I decided to just ignore it. But I couldn’t ...

Computer scientist Melanie Mitchell discusses why artificial intelligence doesn’t “think” or “reason” like humans, and how we can create better methods for measuring machine cognition. Building a ...

Hidden correspondences hint at a deeper structure to the mathematical universe. Our columnist unpacks one of those connections and asks mathematicians what they might mean. The mathematical universe ...

In theoretical computer science, the key to cracking tough problems is finding the right tools. Most researchers gravitate toward tools that match the problems they hope to solve, and some devote ...

Focus, commitment, and insight resulted in a “once in a century” proof. Hong Wang is now just the third woman to win a Fields Medal. No error was found, the proof ...

With automated proof-checkers, a problem can be broken up into small chunks, solved bit-by-bit, then reassembled with confidence that every piece is correct. For some, this heralds a new area in ...

Over hundreds of years, increasingly sophisticated instruments have revealed — and continue to reveal — the secrets of our star.