Quanta

Machine learning works spectacularly well, but mathematicians aren’t quite sure why.

Nature offers a panoply of ways to determine an organism’s sex. How can such a fundamental property be so variable?

Three computer scientists have solved a problem central to a dozen far-flung mathematical fields.

The polymath Christoph Adami is investigating life’s origins by reimagining living things as self-perpetuating information strings.

Scientists have begun to identify the symphony of biological triggers that powered the extraordinary expansion of the human brain.

A single genetic change and some clever geometry show how single-celled organisms can band together to form cooperative multicellular entities.

The physicist Gabriela González is on the cusp of finding the first direct evidence of gravitational waves — soundlike wobbles in space-time produced by black holes and their kin.

A theorem for coloring a large class of “perfect” mathematical networks could ease the way for a long-sought general coloring proof.

Complex natural systems defy standard mathematical analysis, so one ecologist is throwing out the equations.