For new discoveries, everyday mysteries, and the science behind the headlines, follow NPR's ShortWave podcast . Over a century ago, the German psychologist Wolfgang Köhler conducted what became a ...

In a new study, bumble bees solve a completely novel object-manipulation task. What makes this behavior especially remarkable is that the bees had never been trained. The findings challenge the ...

In mid-May, OpenAI announced that an internal AI model had disproved the Erdős unit distance conjecture, a famous problem in discrete geometry that had stumped human mathematicians for the last 80 ...

“If you are a mathematician,” one of the world’s leading mathematicians recently wrote, “you may want to make sure you are sitting down before reading further.” And you’ll definitely need to sit down ...

Do we need quantum computers to fully understand complex chemical reactions? A new result, decades in the making, shows the surprising power of ordinary “classical” machines. What Garnet Chan cares ...

Last week, OpenAI shocked the mathematical community by revealing that one of its internal artificial intelligence (AI) models had found a counterexample to a famous conjecture made by legendary ...

OpenAI claims its new reasoning model has produced an original mathematical proof disproving a famous unsolved conjecture in geometry, which was first posed by Paul Erdős in 1946. If this sounds ...

In October 2024 I attended a workshop at Harvard University where mathematicians talked through the uses of artificial intelligence in their field. Most were less worried about the future of math than ...

Researchers have found a faster, more accurate way to design magnetic “bottles” that hold plasma for fusion power. Using symmetry theory instead of traditional, slow Newton-based calculations, they ...

Detectives in Camden County said they were able to solve a decades-old homicide case involving two young women who were brutally murdered in the 1990s. Using an array of new DNA testing systems, ...

Leaders often fall into the ‘fixer trap,’ solving problems instead of developing their teams. This piece shows how stepping back builds independent thinkers, strengthens trust and scales leadership ...