The bird retina is one of the most energetically expensive tissues in the animal kingdom, yet it doesn’t use the energy ...

A graduate student recently harnessed the complexity of mathematical proofs to create a powerful new tool in cryptography.

Those scientists saved countless lives, but their forecast was more of an educated guess than it might have appeared. It was ...

The sunlight-collecting organelles known as chloroplasts solve a packing problem: how to optimize photosynthesis without ...

Remarkably preserved fossils found in southern China offer a fascinating window into what life looked like at the end of the ...

Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory is so widely accepted that modern mathematicians hardly think about it. But believing in its core principles didn’t come easily.

Every experience we have changes our brain, the way a ceramicist reshapes a slab of clay. Every corner we turn, every conversation we have, every shudder we feel causes cascading effects: Chemicals ...

Neutrinos have about as little influence as a particle can have. They have essentially no heft, no electric charge, and no “color” charge. As a result, the neutrino has no connection with most of ...

In theory, a universe can come in any shape or size, but scientists prefer to think about three basic kinds of universes: one that’s expanding, one that’s collapsing, and one that stays the same. Out ...

Off the coast of Japan, biologists netted a pea-size jellyfish with an unusual circadian clock — a chance finding that suggests there are likely more overlooked biological timekeeping mechanisms to be ...

Intuition breaks down once we’re dealing with the endless. To begin with: Some infinities are bigger than others.

But after reading Decoherence and Quantum Darwinism, a book published in March 2025 by the physicist Wojciech Zurek, I’m excited by the possibility of an answer that does away with all those fanciful ...