Stories by Joseph Howlett

Experts gave AI 10 math problems to solve in a week. OpenAI, researchers and amateurs all gave it their best shot

LLMs have recently helped find solutions to a number of minor longstanding problems. But a new plan called First Proof is really putting them to the test

Frustrated by the AI industry’s claims of proving math results without offering transparency, a team of leading academics has proposed a better way

After 25 years, Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider—the U.S.’s largest and only particle collider—has ceased operations, but its science lives on

Researchers have found what might be a little red dot transitioning into its final state, where x-rays burst through its gas cocoon. Others argue the object is nothing special

The sun is experiencing a violent solar storm, releasing one of the strongest solar flares seen in the past 30 years

An exoplanet called HD 137010 b might be the closest thing astronomers have ever seen to “Earth 2.0.” The trouble is that it’s only been seen once—and may never be glimpsed again

A century ago, Erwin Schrödinger came up with an equation that says how the quantum world behaves. Now scientists are asking what happens when the observer is part of that world

Astronomers puzzled out minuscule distortions in images of faraway galaxies taken by JWST in order to chart the invisible

A fresh look at the Helix Nebula captures new details of the cycle of stellar life and death

Researchers don’t know how this pair of free-floating planets formed or why it radiates so brightly

The hunt for dark matter is in crisis, and it’s time for radical new ideas to explain our universe