Extremophiles that thrive in the most unforgiving environments aren’t just biological curiosities. Understanding their ...

The biologist’s bold “energetic view of life” looks to the body’s strangest organelles as the link between cells, health, and ...

The idea of ‘biological agency’ — that life devises its own goals and behaves accordingly — complicates our understanding of ...

Researchers thought that what enabled complex fluids to break apart was their elasticity. But a crack in a nonelastic simple ...

Researchers thought that what enabled complex fluids to break apart was their elasticity. But a crack in a nonelastic simple ...

Remarkably preserved fossils found in southern China offer a fascinating window into what life looked like at the end of the Cambrian explosion, with half of the species uncovered being new to science ...

Today’s computers need safeguards against random energy fluctuations. Thermodynamic computers would put those fluctuations to ...

W hen I was first learning to write, my letters and words ran from right to left, reversed as if in a mirror. Being ...

The detailed understanding of brains and multicellular bodies reached new heights this year, while the genomes of the COVID-19 virus and various organisms yielded more surprises. The Quanta Newsletter ...

The biologist’s bold “energetic view of life” looks to the body’s strangest organelles as the link between cells, health, and mind and the foundation of our experience of being alive. Mixing Is the ...

From brain folds to insect architecture, L. Mahadevan explains how complex biological forms and behaviors emerge through the interplay of physical forces, environment and embodiment. The Quanta ...

When checking that solutions to certain problems are correct, it turns out, you can’t get around the inherent complexity of ...