Researchers are uncovering striking mathematical patterns that run through the human body, from the size and number of cells to the branching of neurons and blood vessels. These rules, which echo ...

Termite mounds are remarkable structures that regulate temperature, balance airflow, and maintain structural stability in ...

Excerpted with permission from Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality, by Max Tegmark. Available from Random House/Knopf. Copyright ...

In nature, many things have evolved that differ in size, color and, above all, in shape. While the color or size of an object can be easily described, the description of a shape is more complicated.

Bird beaks come in almost every shape and size—from the straw-like beak of a hummingbird to the slicing, knife-like beak of an eagle. We have found, however, that this incredible diversity is ...

Simon DeDeo, a research fellow in applied mathematics and complex systems at the Santa Fe Institute, had a problem. He was collaborating on a new project analyzing 300 years’ worth of data from the ...

Last spring, mathematician Henry Segerman found a peculiar post on Facebook. It was by a programmer who had could not conjure mental images---a condition called aphantasia. Segerman immediately ...

Sometimes visualising a geometrical proof can make understanding it so much easier. Now mathematicians Elizabeth Slavkovsky and Oliver Knill, both of Harvard University, have taken a step in that ...

On August 10, 1632, only 10 months before the Roman Inquisition condemned Galileo Galilei for his advocacy of Copernican astronomy, five Jesuits met in Rome to discuss a seemingly arcane point: Is a ...