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.

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 ...

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 ...

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

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.