Ten years ago, researchers proved that adding full memory can theoretically aid computation. They’re just now beginning to ...

A new proof reveals the answer to the decades-old “moving sofa” problem. It highlights how even the simplest optimization ...

Quantum calculations amount to sophisticated estimates. But in 1931, Hans Bethe intuited precisely how a chain of particles ...

A young computer scientist and two colleagues show that searches within data structures called hash tables can be much faster than previously deemed possible.

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The world of mathematics is full of unreachable corners, where unsolvable problems live. Now, yet another has been exposed. In 1900, the eminent mathematician David Hilbert announced a list of 23 key ...

Under the sea ice during the Arctic’s pitch-black polar night, cells power photosynthesis on the lowest light levels ever observed in nature. Most of life’s engines run on sunlight. Photons filter ...

Is the universe infinite, Aristotle asked in 350 BCE, “or is this an impossibility? The decision … is … all-important to our search for the truth.” The Greek ...

DNA is often compared to a written language. The metaphor leaps out: Like letters of the alphabet, molecules (the nucleotide bases A, T, C and G, for adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine) are ...