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 ...

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

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

The precursors of heavy elements might arise in the plasma underbellies of swollen stars or in smoldering stellar corpses.

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

Jenna Ahart is a science journalist specializing in the physical sciences. Her work has appeared in outlets such as Science, MIT Technology Review, and Live Science. She studied journalism ...

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

In a landmark series of calculations, physicists have proved that black holes can shed information, which seems impossible by definition. The work appears to resolve a paradox that Stephen Hawking ...