On Monday, I looked at the possibility of artificial intelligence through the perspective of history: the history of the field and of expert conjecture. That analysis revealed that, up until now, ...

“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.” This famous quote by Isaac Newton points to an axiom that lies at the heart of The Sciences — knowledge precedes ...

A painless, non-invasive brain stimulation technique can significantly improve how young adults learn math, my colleagues and I found in a recent study. In a paper in PLOS Biology, we describe how ...

Before it became the province of futurists, the word singularity had significance in both mathematics and the physical sciences. A mathematical singularity is a point at which a function is not “well ...

Black holes and wormholes are the ultimate fodder for science fiction. Need to travel through time? No problem! Build a wormhole. Want to see a different universe? Dive into a black hole! Though these ...

Watching this soap film stretch, rupture and reform in slow motion is mesmerising – but mathematicians see more than a trippy image. The point where the bubble breaks explosively is a mathematical ...