The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Computer scientists often deal with abstract problems that are hard to comprehend, but an exciting new algorithm matters to anyone who ...

We’re suckers for the kind of “life hacks” that tell you that you’ve been doing some relatively mundane task all wrong, and that there’s a super-easy alternative which can massively speed up your ...

Three books explore the promise and peril of artificial intelligence. A metronome ticks. A record spins. And as a feel-good pop track plays, a giant compactor slowly crushes a Jenga tower of material ...

The way that books are selected for publication has remained basically the same for years: editors read over a manuscript and decide if they think it has potential and is a good fit. But that could be ...

A 9th-century Persian scholar, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, revolutionized mathematics by introducing systematic methods for solving equations, laying the groundwork for algebra. His name gave rise ...