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 ...

Last year, an immense but brief outburst of seismic energy was soon followed by a long hum that made the world ring. Finding its cause took 68 scientists and an assist by the Danish military.

In this special live recording from the International Congress of Mathematicians in Philadelphia, July 2026, the central question discussed was what do mathematicians really value about doing ...

The bacterial flagellar motor is finally understood after 50 years. In its workings, columnist Natalie Wolchover finds the essence of life.

For the first time in 30 years, computer scientists have found a better way to allocate objects evenly between two groups. Computer scientist Melanie Mitchell discusses why artificial intelligence ...

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 ...

About the author George Musser is a contributing editor at Scientific American magazine and the author of three books: Spooky Action at a Distance, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to String Theory, and ...

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.

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.

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.