Science

Seven Perfect Shuffles Randomize a Deck of Cards. But H...

A decades-old proof showed that seven shuffles are enough to mix up a deck of ca...

How Many Elementary Particles Are There, Really?

Plausible answers range from 17 to — in all seriousness — 995.5. The ...

Where Did Earth Get Its Oceans? Maybe It Made Them Itself.

At first, scientists thought Earth’s water came from comets. Then, asteroids. No...

What’s the Future of Gene Editing?

In the first episode of the new season of ‘The Joy of Why,’ Nobel Laureate Jenni...

An Early Step on the Long, Strange Road to Photosynthesis

An ancient lineage of cyanobacteria is helping biologists uncover an early evolu...

How Terry Tao Became an Evangelist for AI in Math

With automated proof-checkers, a problem can be broken up into small chunks, sol...

Are Memories Transferable — or Edible?

In the 1960s, worm-training experiments and their strange implications captivate...

More Conversations, Complex Questions, and Bold Ideas i...

The podcast returns with 12 all-new episodes that explore the biggest questions ...

Entanglement Builds Space-Time. Now “Magic” Gives It Gr...

In holographic theories, physicists may have traced the pliability of space-time...

The Dirt That Refused To Die

Lifelike biochemistry continued to unfold in sterilized soil for six years, poin...

Key Chemistry Question Answered, No Quantum Computer Re...

Do we need quantum computers to fully understand complex chemical reactions? A n...

How We See the Beautiful, Violent Sun

Over hundreds of years, increasingly sophisticated instruments have revealed — a...

When Quiet Undersea Volcanoes Turn Disruptive

Earth’s largest volcanic system, hidden in mountain chains under the sea, has lo...

How Ecotypes Harbor the Genetic Memory of a Species’ Past

Evolutionary biologists are uncovering genomic mechanisms that allow populations...

How Alexander Grothendieck Revolutionized 20th-Century ...

Grothendieck is revered in the world of math; outside of it, he’s known for his ...

Two Researchers Are Rebuilding Mathematics From the Gro...

By replacing the most fundamental concept in topology, Peter Scholze and Dustin ...