IntroductionThe jellyfish that move through the seas by gently pulsing their saclike bodies may not seem to hold many secrets that would interest human...

IntroductionSailors have spun yarns for centuries about gigantic rogue waves that could suddenly come out of nowhere to capsize the ships of unwary mariners....

IntroductionBy definition, the universe seems like it should be the totality of everything that exists. Yet a variety of arguments emerging from cosmology, particle...

IntroductionLife on other worlds — if it exists — might be so alien as to be unrecognizable. There’s no guarantee that alien biology would...

IntroductionPerpetual motion machines are impossible, at least in our everyday world. But down at the level of quantum mechanics, the laws of thermodynamics don’t...

IntroductionComputation is a familiar concept most of us understand intuitively. Take the function f(x) = x + 3. When x is three, f(3) =...

IntroductionOn March 15, intriguing seminar announcements sent rumblings through the field of combinatorics, the mathematical study of counting. Three collaborators planned to give coordinated...

IntroductionFor the first time, researchers have determined how a human olfactory receptor captures an airborne scent molecule, the pivotal chemical event that triggers our...

IntroductionThe first proof that many people ever learn, early in high school, is the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid’s proof that there are infinitely many...

IntroductionIn March 2018 at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, surrounded by his devoted keepers, Sudan the northern white rhino breathed his last. He...

IntroductionThe idea of infinity is probably about as old as numbers themselves, going back to whenever people first realized that they could keep counting...

IntroductionIt’s not an exaggeration to say that every major advance in physics for more than a century has turned on revelations about symmetry. It’s...