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

Tony Tyson’s cameras revealed the universe’s dark contents. Now, with the Rubin Observatory’s 3.2-billion-pixel camera, he’s ...

A better understanding of human smell is emerging as scientists interrogate its fundamental elements: the odor molecules that ...

After just a few months of work, a complete newcomer to the world of sphere packing has solved one of its biggest open problems.

Quanta’s award-winning coverage of computational complexity, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, cryptography and more.

Detecting a graviton — the hypothetical particle thought to carry the force of gravity — is the ultimate physics experiment. Conventional wisdom, however, says it can’t be done. According to one ...

A new argument explores how the growth of disorder could cause massive objects to move toward one another. Physicists are both interested and skeptical.

Using machine learning, string theorists are finally showing how microscopic configurations of extra dimensions translate into sets of elementary particles — though not yet those of our universe.

Diffusion models generate incredible images by learning to reverse the process that, among other things, causes ink to spread through water.

A decade after the discovery of the “amplituhedron,” physicists have excavated more of the timeless geometry underlying the standard picture of how particles move.

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.

Tony Tyson’s cameras revealed the universe’s dark contents. Now, with the Rubin Observatory’s 3.2-billion-pixel camera, he’s ready to study dark matter and dark energy in unprecedented detail.