Over hundreds of years, increasingly sophisticated instruments have revealed — and continue to reveal — the secrets of our star.

Earth’s largest volcanic system, hidden in mountain chains under the sea, has long been assumed to erupt only quietly. The ...

At 25, Kurt Gödel proved there can never be a mathematical “theory of everything.” Columnist Natalie Wolchover explores the ...

Evolutionary biologists are uncovering genomic mechanisms that allow populations to adapt quickly to different, hyperlocal ...

By replacing the most fundamental concept in topology, Peter Scholze and Dustin Clausen are taking the first step in a far ...

Grothendieck is revered in the world of math; outside of it, he’s known for his unusual life, if he’s known at all. But what ...

At 25, Kurt Gödel proved there can never be a mathematical “theory of everything.” Columnist Natalie Wolchover explores the implications. Astronomers are preparing for a new era of big-data astronomy, ...

Metal-eating microbes get energy from rocks and could teach us about life on other worlds — but first scientists had to learn how to grow them in the lab. Jeanette Kazmierczak was Quanta's editorial ...

The bird retina is one of the most energetically expensive tissues in the animal kingdom, yet it doesn’t use the energy advantage of oxygen. New research finally explains how this is possible.

In July 2012, physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Europe triumphantly announced the discovery of the Higgs boson, the long-sought linchpin of the subatomic world. Interacting with Higgs ...

Since the start of the 20th century, the heart of mathematics has been the proof — a rigorous, logical argument for whether a given statement is true or false. Mathematicians’ careers are measured by ...