The quadratic formula isn't just something that teachers use to torture algebra students. The Babylonians once used it to calculate taxes.
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The very concept of a "problem with no solution" goes against human nature. But we must accept this harsh reality to have peace in our lives.
The Poisson distribution has everyday applications in science, finance, and insurance. To compare the results of some biomedical studies, more people ought to be familiar with it.
The idea of black holes has been around for over 200 years. Today, we're seeing them in previously unimaginable ways.
A recent study overviews the thinnest X-ray detector ever created.
An elaborate device called the Mechanical Turk defeated Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte at chess. Edgar Allan Poe revealed the hoax.
Think you can solve it? One mathematician has already offered about $1,000 and a bottle of champagne to whoever cracks it first.
Superposition, entanglement, qubits, and Google's big announcement.
By the end of the decade, we may discover one million black holes. A large enough mass in a compact volume inevitably forms a black hole. Both inside and outside the […]
SpaceX's momentous Crew Dragon launch is a sign of things to come for the space industry, and humanity's future.
If the electromagnetic and weak forces unify to make the electroweak force, maybe, at even higher energies, something even greater happens?
On July 4, we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the discovery of the Higgs boson, the missing piece of the Standard Model of particle physics.
These tiny fish are helping scientists understand how the human brain processes sound.
Since the 1940s, NASA has been testing experimental aircraft (aka X-planes) at California’s Armstrong Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base. In the past two decades, however, the agency […]
The controversy over the universe's expansion rate continues with a new, faster estimate.
About 8% of our genome is made of leftover viruses from our ancestors' infections.
We just found the first one within 1,000 light-years of us. But there’s probably one much, much closer. For a long time, black holes were known to exist only in the […]
While Y chromosome loss was first observed in 1963, it was not until 2014 that researchers found the link to a shorter life span.
The massive craft could carry 100 humans to Mars and revolutionize space exploration.
How can researchers map something as complex as the human brain?
Named M51-ULS-1b, it's certainly a curious astronomical event. But the evidence is far too weak to conclude "planet."
It marks another milestone in SpaceX's long-standing effort to make spaceflight cheaper.
With a record-setting $1.9 billion jackpot, you'd think it's a no-brainer to buy a Powerball ticket. But the math truly shows otherwise.
The quantum world — and its inherent uncertainty — defies our ability to describe it in words.
Researchers at University College London link waist circumference with dementia.
Science journals may be lowering their standards to publish studies with eye-grabbing — but probably incorrect — results.
If dark matter is fundamentally different from the normal matter we know, there should be a way to test it. Here are the results. Dark matter — despite the enormous indirect evidence for […]
The act of observing doesn’t just determine a previously indeterminate state, but can destroy information, too. Imagine that you’re a scientist attempting to understand reality at a fundamental level. How […]