Quanta

A quantum computing pioneer explains why analog simulators may beat out general-purpose digital quantum machines — for now.

The question is deceptively simple: Given a geometric space — a sphere, perhaps, or a doughnut-like torus — is it possible to divide it into smaller pieces? In the case […]

Try gift-wrapping a soccer ball, and you will quickly encounter the geometric abyss between paper’s inherent flatness and a sphere’s natural curves.

Every cell in your body reads the same genome, the DNA-encoded instruction set that builds proteins. But your cells couldn’t be more different. Neurons send electrical messages, liver cells break […]

A year after tackling how close together prime number pairs can stay, mathematicians have now made the first major advance in 76 years in understanding how far apart primes can […]

There may be a universal logic to how physicists, computers and brains tease out important features from among other irrelevant bits of data.

If all the animals on Earth could offer a single lesson for long-term survival, it might be this: Sex works. Out of the estimated 8 million animal species, all but […]

Early in cosmic history, our universe may have bumped into another — a primordial clash that could have left traces in the Big Bang’s afterglow.

Testing the multiverse hypothesis requires measuring whether our universe is statistically typical among the infinite variety of universes. But infinity does a number on statistics.