Stories by Joseph Howlett

What if the universe’s biggest mystery has no answer?

Can a six-dimensional sphere be described using imaginary numbers? For decades, experts puzzled over this question. Now an AI has apparently answered it

OpenAI’s proof seems eligible for a $1-million prize—but only by using a controversial loophole

Could the hunt for the universe’s missing matter be the biggest wild goose chase in scientific history?

A new declaration from winners of the Fields Medal reflects many mathematicians’ growing alarm over a “severe misalignment” between the tech industry and their field a week after AI toppled one of math’s biggest open problems

As new 9/11 documents emerge, AI transforms math and fuels debates over pollution, power and progress

What happens when machines surpass the most brilliant human minds? Mathematicians are finding out

Prior to the announcement, rumors were circulating online among mathematicians over the proof’s origins—OpenAI has denied all allegations

A mathematician compared the feat to the history-making chess competition in which IBM’s Deep Blue computer beat Garry Kasparov in 1997

The world’s biggest dark matter search saw a particle it cannot explain

In its hunt for dark matter, the XENONnT experiment has detected the rare, feeble glow of neutrinos smacking into electrons

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope will open a whole new window on the cosmos. Here are 10 things it’s likely to show us

Researchers have nailed down an elusive quantity called baryon number, which may be responsible for the cosmic mismatch between matter and antimatter

There’s a $1-million prize for proving the Riemann hypothesis. Claude couldn’t pull that off, but it made significant progress on a related problem

OpenAI released 10 AI-generated results over the weekend. Some mathematicians are unhappy with their approach

A million-dollar math mystery may someday be resolved in a physics lab. A new study brings this vision one step closer.

Discovered by an amateur mathematician in 2022, this strange construct can tile an infinite surface without repeating. But can it be useful in the real world?

The 2026 Fields Medals recognize breakthroughs in the math of messy fluids, tangled knots, spinning pencils, and more

What’s the secret to prompting an AI to solve math problems that have left humans stumped? Tell it to believe in itself

The signature of Sak Tahn Waax, or “White-Chested Fox,” was found inscribed in a 1,000-year-old chamber beneath present-day Guatemala

A recent study in the journal Nature carries cosmos-quaking implications for our understanding of the universe—except a new preprint says that it’s wrong

A new study claims that the universe isn’t entirely the same no matter where you look—a radical proposal

The company has been touting its quantum technology for years, but some experts say these claims just don’t pass muster

The evidence is mounting: this interstellar visitor is even older and weirder than anyone thought