Winning entries in the 2026 Nikon Small World competitions reveal the hidden interactions that govern everyday life.

Moritz Hardt, author of a new book on benchmarks, believes these “standardized tests” for artificial intelligence are ...

A collision may have left these galaxies without dark matter. That spells trouble for alternative gravity theories.

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 ...

A mathematical mechanism enables AI models to process language at scale, undergirding the current AI revolution. Our ...

Unlike other recent AI proofs, this one has been unpacked by human experts. The implications, one mathematician said, are ...

Paul Nelson has solved the subconvexity problem, bringing mathematicians one step closer to understanding the Riemann hypothesis and the distribution of prime numbers. A number theorist recalls his ...

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 ...

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 ...

Marijn Heule turns mathematical statements into something like Sudoku puzzles, then has computers go to work on them. His proofs have been called “disgusting,” but they go beyond what any human can do ...