For over a century, biologists have had to contend with a complicated picture of genetics

Jellyfish and other aquatic creatures embody solutions to diverse problems in engineering, medicine and mathematics

Yael Tauman Kalai’s breakthroughs secure our digital world, from cloud computing to our quantum

A new paper finds a faster method for determining when two mathematical groups are the

For a half century, mathematicians have tried to define the exact circumstances under which a

Extreme microorganisms carpeting the Atacama Desert in Chile illuminate how life might have first taken

By measuring the universe’s emptiest spaces, scientists can study how matter clumps together and

In some deep subterranean aquifers, cells have a chemical trick for making oxygen that could

By treating Earth as a topological insulator — a state of quantum matter — physicists found a

New research reveals how marine microbes use an extra membrane that once had digestive functions

For decades, physicists have struggled to develop a quantum theory of gravity. But what if

New modeling work suggests why nature is more diverse than niche-based ecological theory predicts

In their jiggles and shakes, red giant stars encode a record of the magnetic fields

The telescope conjecture gave mathematicians a handle on ways to map one sphere to another

A new paper establishes a long-conjectured bound about the size of the overlap between

The preferred “handedness” of biomolecules could have emerged from biased interactions between electrons and magnetic

Measurement and entanglement both have a “spooky” nonlocal flavor to them. Now physicists are harnessing

By using “classical shadows,” ordinary computers can beat quantum computers at the tricky task of

Every species develops at its own unique tempo, leaving scientists to wonder what governs their

To catch even a whiff of the universe’s earliest epochs — an age of darkness

Some modern image generators rely on the principles of diffusion to create images. Alternatives based

Exposure to a virus isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. The concept of “infectious

Under a microscope, cells in a worm embryo deliberately eliminated one-third of their genome

Our galaxy’s stars keep a record of its past. By reading those stories, astronomers

To better understand how neural networks learn to simulate writing, researchers trained simpler versions on

For decades, Carrie Partch has led pioneering structural research on the protein clockwork that keeps

Eugenio Calabi, who died on September 25, conceived of novel geometric objects that later became

For decades, researchers have debated whether brain cells called astrocytes can signal like neurons. Researchers

A new analysis of ancient sediments fills a gap in the fossil record — revealing a

After identifying interlocking symmetries in mammalian cells, scientists can describe some tissues as liquid crystals

The moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn appear to have subsurface oceans — tantalizing targets in the

Cells in the placenta have an unusual trick for activating gentle immune defenses and keeping

Scientists have recently discovered scores of free-floating worlds that defy classification. The new observations

Some strange mathematical sequences are always whole numbers — until they’re not. The puzzling patterns

Sitting alongside the neurons in your enteric nervous system are underappreciated glial cells, which play

How Fermat’s less famous ‘little theorem’ got mathematicians young and old to play with

For 50 years, physicists have understood current as a flow of charged particles. But a

Modern scientists aren’t content with predicting how life evolves. They want to shape it

A century ago, the Stern-Gerlach experiment established the truth of quantum mechanics. Now it

Erin Calipari works to understand how drugs like opioids and cocaine alter learning circuits and

In an atomically thin stack of semiconductors, a mechanism unseen in any natural substance causes

Astronomers thought they had solved the mystery of gamma-ray bursts. A few recent events

Just as ice melts to water, graphs undergo phase transitions. Two mathematicians showed that they

For the first time, scientists have decoded the molecular structure of a protein that helps

In a year packed with fascinating discoveries, biologists pushed the limits of synthetic life, probed

Artificial intelligence learned how to generate text and art better than ever before, while computer

Recent observations of an aging, alien planetary system are helping to answer the question: What

From the smallest scales to the largest, the physical world provided no shortage of surprises

Why does natural selection appear to happen slowly on long timescales and quickly on short

Last spring, scientists retrieved a trove of mantle rocks from underneath the Atlantic seafloor — a