The theoretical side of the field doesn’t require computing machines. But many questions would never have been posed without them.

Mathematicians found that a broad class of networks will abruptly shift behavior past a critical point.

By doubling their entire genome, organisms can evolve extremely rapidly — or they can lose it all. New studies reveal how to survive the high-risk, high-reward evolutionary event.

Sarah Demers, chair of the physics department at Yale University, sees the potential for large language models to both help and harm her field.

In this special live recording from the International Congress of Mathematicians in Philadelphia, July 2026, the central question discussed was what do mathematicians really value about doing mathematics in the first place?

Mathematicians at OpenAI showed that the Navier-Stokes equations, which describe how fluids flow, can sometimes “blow up.” But the massive result is not without controversy.

Hidden correspondences hint at a deeper structure to the mathematical universe. Our columnist unpacks one of those connections and asks mathematicians what they might mean.

By revisiting the famous problem — which was controversially solved in the 1970s with the help of computers — mathematicians have gained important new insights into the nature of graphs.

The mystery of the flipping foraminifera may conceal a rarely observed evolutionary process playing out across the planet.

The James Webb Space Telescope spots mysterious “little red dots” everywhere. A bold new theory suggests they’re suns dozens of times larger than our entire solar system.

Comb jellies are helping answer fundamental questions in biology, from how the earliest nervous systems evolved to how bioluminescence works.

Jonathan Halliwell explains how quantum decoherence is key to understanding how we transition from a world with a wave-like nature of matter and energy to the classical macroscopic world that we’re used to.

The proof of a decades-old conjecture has given researchers a new way to understand complex networks.

Half of our genome is made of transposons — snips of DNA that can move and copy themselves. But they’re more than parasites or genetic junk.

Scientists have a history of trying — and failing — to link biology and quantum mechanics. The real connection between them may be in the math.

The biggest breakthrough in modern theoretical physics is the discovery that gravity can collapse the dimensions of space. Physicists don’t yet understand the implications.

After a long hiatus, the problem, which was likely inspired by juggling, has finally been resolved by a group of young mathematicians.

Unexpected patterns traveling across the human brain may be reorganizing its activity in real time.

Maggie Miller explains why our intuition about three dimensions breaks down in four, and how she visualizes 4D spaces as a reel of three-dimensional snapshots.

Scientists assumed that energy flows in only one direction in a turbulent system. What they didn’t know, until they looked closely at brine shrimp, was that a simple factor can reverse the flow.

Mathematicians are facing the sudden shift with grief, anger, and a desperate search for fresh ideas: “If we don’t adapt, there’s just no more math in 50 years.”