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 ...

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

The late Ronald Graham wore two hats. He was a renowned mathematician, at one time president of the American Mathematical Society. He was also a serious juggler, and president of the International ...

The puzzle of emergence asks how regularities emerge on macro scales out of uncountable constituent parts. A new framework has researchers hopeful that a solution is near.

Veronique Greenwood is a science writer and essayist. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, Discover, Aeon, and other publications.

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 ...

A canonical problem in computer science is to find the shortest route to every point in a network. A new approach beats the classic algorithm taught in textbooks. The Quanta Newsletter ...

The theoretical computer scientist behind the influential Unique Games Conjecture delights in the wonders of New York’s Washington Square Park, where he ponders the impossible.

John Pavlus is a writer and filmmaker whose work has appeared in Scientific American, Bloomberg Businessweek, and The Best American Science and Nature Writing series. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

A simple scaling law brings order to the chaos of flowing water, rock, and sediment. New findings have extended the law even further. We Know Simple Fluids Can Flow. Turns Out, Some Can Fracture.

A straightforward conjecture about runners moving around a track turns out to be equivalent to many complex mathematical questions. Three new proofs mark the first significant progress on the problem ...