The proof, known to be so hard that a mathematician once offered 10 martinis to whoever could figure it out, connects quantum ...

A decade ago, Karen Lloyd discovered single-celled microbes living beneath the seafloor. Now she studies how they can survive ...

The quest to find the longest-running simple computer program has identified a new champion. It’s physically impossible to ...

The new science of “emergent misalignment” explores how PG-13 training data — insecure code, superstitious numbers or even ...

For decades, mathematicians have struggled to understand matrices that reflect both order and randomness, like those that ...

Patchen Barss is a Toronto-based science journalist and author. He has contributed to Scientific American, the BBC and Nautilus, among others. His latest book is The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose ...

Quanta’s award-winning coverage of computational complexity, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, cryptography and more.

Explore Quanta’s artificial intelligence coverage.AI may sound like a human, but that doesn’t mean that AI learns like a human. In this episode, Ellie Pavlick explains why understanding how LLMs can ...

For three decades, researchers hunted in vain for new elementary particles that would have explained why nature looks the way it does. As physicists confront that failure, they’re reexamining a ...

For 50 years, mathematicians have believed that the total number of real numbers is unknowable. A new proof suggests otherwise.

In all bilaterally symmetrical animals, from humans down to simple worms, nerves cross from one side of the body to the opposite side of the brain. Geometry may explain why.

A small but enthusiastic group of neuroscientists is exhuming overlooked experiments and performing new ones to explore whether cells record past experiences — fundamentally challenging what memory is ...