TURING MACHINES | ALL TOPICS

Busy Beaver Hunters Reach Numbers That Overwhelm Ordinary Math

By BEN BRUBAKER

The quest to find the longest-running simple computer program has identified a new champion. It's physically impossible to write out the numbers involved using standard mathematical notation.

Read the article

MATERIALS SCIENCE

Quasicrystals Spill Secrets of Their Formation

By PATCHEN BARSS

New studies of the 'platypus of materials' help explain how their atoms arrange themselves into orderly, but nonrepeating, patterns.

Read the article

Q&A

The Pursuit of Life Where It Seems Unimaginable

By LAURA POPPICK

Karen Lloyd studies how single-celled microbes living beneath the seafloor can survive in Earth's crust, possibly for hundreds or thousands of years.

Read the article

THE JOY OF WHY

Do Beautiful Birds Have an Evolutionary Advantage?

Podcast co-hosted by JANNA LEVIN
and STEVEN STROGATZ

Richard Prum explains why he thinks feathers and vibrant traits in birds evolved not solely for survival, but also through aesthetic choice.

Listen (Apple) | Listen (Spotify)

Read the transcript