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

In theory, quantum physics can bypass the hard mathematical problems at the root of modern encryption. A new proof shows how.

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

Image generators are designed to mimic their training data, so where does their apparent creativity come from? A recent study suggests that it’s an inevitable by-product of their architecture.

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 ...

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 ...

The phenomenon of criticality can explain the sudden emergence of new properties in a wide range of complex systems, from avalanches to flocks of birds to stock market crashes. Neuroscientists are now ...

Jenna Ahart is a science journalist specializing in the physical sciences. Her work has appeared in outlets such as Science, MIT Technology Review, and Live Science. She studied journalism and… ...

An attack on a fundamental proof technique reveals a glaring security issue for blockchains and other digital encryption schemes.