Why AI Isn’t Ready to Tackle Our Convoluted Genomes
Some enhancers are, as you’d expect, close to the genes they regulate, or even sit on DNA inside…
Tiny Hairs That Help Corals Breathe May Malfunction in Warming Oceans
Every coral colony is cushioned by a thin boundary layer of water whose movement is slowed by friction…
Inside the Experimental Traps Scientists Set for Ghostly Neutrinos
Seventy years ago, the physicists Clyde Cowan and Frederick Reines took a custom-built 10-ton detector, surrounded it with…
The James Webb Telescope Is Changing Astronomers’ Understanding of the Ancient Cosmos
To test these new ideas, researchers are exploring the infant universe through simulations. “There’s actually been really remarkable…
The Nothing That Has the Potential to Be Anything
A recent example was published in 2025 by researchers at the European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser Facility near Hamburg,…
Scientists Found ‘Magic’ Particles in the Large Hadron Collider
In November, Quanta magazine published a feature on the detection of “magic” top quarks at CERN’s Large Hadron…
A New Bridge Links the Strange Math of Infinity to Computer Science
Computer scientists want to know how many steps a given algorithm requires. For example, any local algorithm that…
Behold the Manifold, the Concept that Changed How Mathematicians View Space
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Standing in the middle of a field, we…
Research Reveals the Optimal Way to Optimize
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1939, upon arriving late to his statistics…
For the First Time, AI Analyzes Language as Well as a Human Expert
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Among the myriad abilities that humans possess, which…
This AI Model Can Intuit How the Physical World Works
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Here’s a test for infants: Show them a…
The Oceans Are Going to Rise—but When?
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In May 2014, NASA announced at a press…