A healthy brain maintains a harmony of neurons that excite or inhibit other neurons, but the lines between different types of ...

In the third century BCE, Apollonius of Perga asked how many circles one could draw that would touch three given circles at exactly one point each. It would take 1,800 years to prove the answer: eight ...

Naomi Saphra thinks that most research into language models focuses too much on the finished product. She’s mining the ...

Two mathematicians have proved that a straightforward question — how hard is it to untie a knot? — has a complicated answer.

t started as a fantasy, then a promise — inspired by biology and animated by the ideas of physicists — and grew to become a powerful research tool. Now artificial intelligence has evolved into ...

Climate science is the most significant scientific collaboration in history. This series from Quanta Magazine guides you through basic climate science — from quantum effects to ancient hothouses, from ...

The Earth’s atmosphere is nothing but freely roaming molecules. Left alone, they would drift and collide, and eventually even out into a mixture that’s dynamic, yet stable and broadly unchanging. The ...

Earth’s radiation can send some molecules spinning or vibrating, which is what makes them greenhouse gases. This infographic explains how relatively few heat-trapping molecules can have a planetary ...

Dated: September 10, 2025 Artificial intelligence is a term with many meanings. These days, it often specifically refers to generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) ...

Scientists have identified tubulin structures in primitive Asgard archea that may have been the precursor of our own cellular skeletons. In 2010, biologists made a shocking discovery. Living in the ...

Amid the chaos of revolutionary France, one man’s mathematical obsession gave way to a calculation that now underpins much of mathematics and physics. The calculation, called the Fourier transform, ...