The central limit theorem started as a bar trick for 18th-century gamblers. Now scientists rely on it every day.

Pushed down to a certain scale, the laws of physics seem to fall apart. Astrid Eichhorn, a leader in an area of study called asymptotic safety, thinks we just need to push a little further.

A straightforward conjecture about runners moving around a track turns out to be equivalent to many complex mathematical ...

Every second, hundreds to thousands of molecules move through thousands of nuclear pores in each of your cells. A new high-definition view reveals the machine in action.

Baez called for the development of new mathematics — he called it “green” math — to better capture the workings of Earth’s biosphere and climate. For his part, he sought to apply category theory, a ...

The last decade has seen vast improvements in humanoid robots, but graduating to widespread use might require going back to the fundamentals. “Not reliably,” Hurst said. “I don’t think it’s totally ...

According to Einstein’s theory of gravity, black holes have only a small handful of distinguishing characteristics. Quantum theory implies they may have more. Now an experimental search finds that any ...

Black hole and Big Bang singularities break our best theory of gravity. A trilogy of theorems hints that physicists must go to the ends of space and time to find a fix.

The math of data structures helps us understand how different storage systems come with different trade-offs between resources such as time and memory. Is the inside of a vision model at all like a ...

Naomi Saphra thinks that most research into language models focuses too much on the finished product. She’s mining the history of their training for insights into why these systems work the way they ...

Large language models such as ChatGPT come with filters to keep certain info from getting out. A new mathematical argument shows that systems like this can never be completely safe.