By studying the geometry of model space-times, researchers offer alternative views of the universe’s first moments.

Researchers have proved that secure quantum encryption is possible in a world without hard problems.

Many microbes and cells are in deep sleep, waiting for the right moment to activate. Biologists discovered a widespread protein that abruptly shuts down a cell’s activity — and turns it back on just as fast.

Research suggests that psychedelic drugs can reopen critical periods of brain development to create opportunities for re-learning and psychological healing. In this episode, co-host Janna Levin speaks with Gül Dölen, a neuroscientist studying the therapeutic…

Mathematicians show that graphs of a certain common type must contain a route that visits each point exactly once.

The puzzle of emergence asks how regularities emerge on macro scales out of uncountable constituent parts. A new framework has researchers hopeful that a solution is near.

Computer scientist Lance Fortnow writes that by embracing the computations that surround us, we can begin to understand and tame our seemingly random world.

The evolutionarily ancient part of the brain that controls breathing and heart rate also regulates the immune system — a discovery about the brain-body axis made by experts on taste.

Making ice requires more than subzero temperatures. The unpredictable process takes microscopic scaffolding, random jiggling and often a little bit of bacteria.

European beech trees more than 1,500 kilometers apart all drop their fruit at the same time in a grand synchronization event now linked to the summer solstice.

How are scientists able to crack fundamental questions about nature and life? How does math make the complex cosmos understandable? In this episode, the physicist Nigel Goldenfeld and co-host Steven Strogatz explore the deep foundations of the scientific…

Useful mathematical concepts, like the number line, can linger for millennia before they are rigorously defined.

Computational complexity theorists have discovered a surprising new way to understand what makes certain problems hard.

Three years ago, Google’s AlphaFold pulled off the biggest artificial intelligence breakthrough in science to date, accelerating molecular research and kindling deep questions about why we do science.

Two mathematicians have proved a long-standing conjecture that is a step on the way toward finding the worst shape for packing the plane.

Susan Clark is helping to unravel the mysterious workings of the Milky Way’s magnetic field, a critical missing piece of the galactic puzzle.

After decades of uncertainty, a motley team of programmers has proved precisely how complicated simple computer programs can get.

If you cover a surface with tiles, repetitive patterns always emerge — or do they? In this week’s episode, mathematician Natalie Priebe Frank and co-host Janna Levin discuss how recent breakthroughs in tiling can unlock structural secrets in the natural world.

Neural networks and other forms of machine learning ultimately learn by trial and error, one improvement at a time.

Number theorist Ken Ono is teaching Olympians to swim more efficiently.