A decades-old conjecture about the best way to minimize the surface area of a three-bubble cluster…
Author: Erica Klarreich
Mathematicians Roll the Dice and Get Rock-Paper-Scissors
Researchers have uncovered a surprising wealth of “intransitive” patterns in randomly chosen dice.
Computer Scientists Achieve the ‘Crown Jewel’ of Cryptography
For years, a master tool called indistinguishability obfuscation seemed too good to be true. Three researchers…
Computer Scientists Break the ‘Traveling Salesperson’ Record
Finally, there’s a better way to find approximate solutions to the notorious optimization problem, often used…
Mathematicians Report New Discovery About the Dodecahedron
Starting at a corner, could you walk around the surface of this Platonic solid without crossing…
A Landmark Math Proof Clears a Hurdle in the Top Erdős Conjecture
Two mathematicians have proved the first leg of the Hungarian scholar's all-time favorite problem about number…
A Grad Student Solved the Epic Conway Knot Problem—in a Week
Lisa Piccirillo encountered the more than 50-year-old question by chance at a conference. Her solution relies…
The New Math Bridge Beyond Fermat’s Last Theorem
Two papers, representing the work of more than a dozen mathematicians, have finally figured out how…
A Decades-Old Computer Science Puzzle Was Solved in Two Pages
With a stunningly simple proof, a researcher has finally cracked the sensitivity conjecture, "one of the…
Tadashi Tokieda Finds Startling Objects in Plain Sight
This collector discovers new physical phenomena by looking at the everyday world through the eyes of…