Quanta

A 115-year effort to bridge the particle and fluid descriptions of nature has led mathematicians to an unexpected answer.

Scientists hope that new genetic letters, created in the lab, will endow DNA with new powers.

The biologist Deborah Gordon has uncovered how ant colonies search efficiently without central organization, an insight that might improve computer networks.

By replacing black holes with fuzzballs — dense, star-like objects from string theory — researchers think they can avoid some knotty paradoxes at the edge of physics.

By swapping ancient genes into modern E. coli, scientists hope to tease out the rules of evolution.

A 150-year-old conundrum about how to group people has been solved, but many puzzles remain.

Quantum theorist Christopher Fuchs explains how to solve the paradoxes of quantum mechanics. His price: physics gets personal.

One of the greatest mysteries in physics could be solved by a mattress-like axion field that permeates space and time.

When a legendary mathematician found a mistake in his own work, he embarked on a computer-aided quest to eliminate human error. To succeed, he has to rewrite the century-old rules […]