Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog.Astronomers claim in a new paper that star motions should make it easy for civilizations to spread across the galaxy,…

In my 50s, too old to become a real expert, I have finally fallen in love with algebraic geometry. As the name suggests, this is the study of geometry using algebra. Around 1637, René…

Theoretical physicists have known since the 1930s that quantum gravity is necessary to bring order into the laws of nature, but 80 years on, a solution isn’t anywhere in sight.Photograph…

You can find Lynda Woods Cleary playing Scrabble every Tuesday at a Panera in Princeton, NJ. Cleary, a 68-year-old retired financial consultant, has been playing every week for 20…

Nowadays, the words “artificial intelligence” seem to be on practically everyone’s lips, from Elon Musk to Henry Kissinger. At least a dozen countries have mounted major AI initiatives,…

When it comes to using computers to steal money, few can come close to matching the success of Russian hacker Evgeniy Bogachev. The $3 million bounty the FBI has offered for Bogachev’s…

In the introduction to her new book, Hannah Fry points out something interesting about the phrase “Hello World.” It’s never been quite clear, she says, whether the phrase—which…

Our future will be bright, fast—and full of robots. It’ll be more Asimov than Terminator: servant robots, more or less similar to us. Some will be upright androids, but most will…

Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine‘s Abstractions blog.In math, sometimes the most common things are the hardest to find.Photograph by Vladyslav Danilin / ShutterstockThe…

Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine‘s Abstractions blog.A spinning cube with attached ribbons returns to its original state only after two full turns, rather than one…