Quanta

On the trail of a dangerous revelation about a Nobel Prize-winning dissident, the biologist Sean B. Carroll rediscovers the rush of an unexpected discovery.

In a virtuoso experiment, physicists have revealed details of a “quantum critical point” that underlies high-temperature superconductivity.

Perhaps chemistry played a more instrumental role in the origin of life than scientists thought.

The biological world is computational at its core, argues computer scientist Leslie Valiant. His “ecorithm” approach uses computational concepts to explore fundamental mysteries of evolution and the mind.

The physicist Subir Sachdev borrows tools from string theory to understand the puzzling behavior of superconductors.

Two leading candidates for a “theory of everything,” long thought incompatible, may be two sides of the same coin.

The laws of physics work both forward and backward in time. So why does time seem to move in only one direction? One potential answer may also reveal the secrets […]

String theory, the multiverse and other ideas of modern physics are potentially untestable. At a historic meeting in Munich, scientists and philosophers asked: should we trust them anyway?

Three years ago, a solitary mathematician released an impenetrable proof of the famous abc conjecture. At a recent conference dedicated to the work, optimism mixed with bafflement.