In a hot spring at Yellowstone National Park, a microbe does something that life shouldn’t be able to do: It breathes oxygen and sulfur at the same time.

Tony Tyson’s cameras revealed the universe’s dark contents. Now, with the Rubin Observatory’s 3.2-billion-pixel camera, he’s ...

How does a cell know when it’s been damaged? A molecular alarm, set off by mutated RNA and colliding ribosomes, signals ...

Erica Klarreich has been writing about mathematics and science for more than 15 years. She has a doctorate in mathematics from Stony Brook University and is a graduate of the Science Communication… ...

Tony Tyson’s cameras revealed the universe’s dark contents. Now, with the Rubin Observatory’s 3.2-billion-pixel camera, he’s ready to study dark matter and dark energy in unprecedented detail.

Explore Quanta’s complex systems coverage.For decades, a small group of mathematicians has patiently unraveled the mystery of what was once math’s most popular picture. Their story shows how ...

A tetrahedron is the simplest Platonic solid. Mathematicians have now made one that’s stable only on one side, confirming a decades-old conjecture.

In math, the search for optimal patterns never ends. The sphere-packing problem — which asks how to cram balls into a (high-dimensional) box as efficiently as possible — is no exception. It has ...

For pioneering computer scientist Donald Knuth, good coding is synonymous with beautiful expression. Donald Knuth is a computer scientist who came of age with his field. During the nascent years of ...

A better understanding of human smell is emerging as scientists interrogate its fundamental elements: the odor molecules that enter your nose and the individual neurons that translate them into ...