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.”

In the shadow of a rumored AI proof of one of the biggest problems in their field, three computer scientists rushed to publish their own milestone result.

C.H. Waddington’s powerful image of embryonic stem cells specializing on a rolling landscape has captivated biologists since the 1950s. Experimental data is finally confirming, and complicating, his visionary ideas.

A mathematical mechanism enables AI models to process language at scale, undergirding the current AI revolution. Our columnist asks: Why is attention the key?

A collision may have left these galaxies without dark matter. That spells trouble for alternative gravity theories.

Evolutionary biologist Toby Kiers explains how fungal networks in soil trade nutrients with plants, help keep carbon underground, and strike bargains without having a brain.

Moritz Hardt, author of a new book on benchmarks, believes these “standardized tests” for artificial intelligence are fundamentally broken — but not unfixable.

Unlike other recent AI proofs, this one has been unpacked by human experts. The implications, one mathematician said, are “staggering.”

Winning entries in the 2026 Nikon Small World competitions reveal the hidden interactions that govern everyday life.

To invade red blood cells, the deadly protists create temporary molecular portals that disappear behind them — doors we can now see in fine detail.

A new topological model connects a centuries-old voting paradox to a surface with no distinct inside or outside.