Nature Research Intelligence Topics Topic summaries Mathematical Sciences Mathematical Physics Mathematical Aspects of Classical Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Information Theory Over the ...

It has long been a mystery why pure math can reveal so much about the nature of the physical world. Antimatter was discovered in Paul Dirac’s equations before being detected in cosmic rays. Quarks ...

Scientists are like prospectors, excavating the natural world seeking gems of knowledge about physical reality. And in the century just past, scientists have dug deep enough to discover that reality’s ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1974, five years before he wrote his Pulitzer Prize–winning book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas Hofstadter was ...

Like great art, great thought experiments have implications unintended by their creators. Take philosopher John Searle’s Chinese room experiment. Searle concocted it to convince us that computers ...

Some technical revolutions enter with drama and a bang, others wriggle unnoticed into our everyday experience. And one of the quietest revolutions of our current century has been the entry of quantum ...