New experiments reveal how astrocytes tune neuronal activity to modulate our mental and emotional states. The results suggest that neuron-only brain models, such as connectomes, leave out a crucial layer of regulation.

Today’s observatories document every pulse and flash in the sky each night. To understand how the cosmos has changed over longer periods, scientists rely on a more tactile technology.

How physically magnifying objects using a key ingredient in diapers has opened an unprecedented view of the microbial world.

Mathematicians finally understand the behavior of an important class of differential equations that describe everything from water pressure to oxygen levels in human tissues.

Machine learning is helping neuroscientists organize vast quantities of cells’ genetic data in the latest neurobiological cartography effort.

We describe electricity as a flow, but that’s not what happens in a typical wire. Physicists have begun to induce electrons to act like fluids, an effort that could illuminate new ways of thinking about quantum systems.

Columnist Philip Ball thinks the phenomenon of decoherence might finally bridge the quantum-classical divide.

Henry Yuen is developing a new mathematical language to describe problems whose inputs and outputs aren’t ordinary numbers.

Innovations in imaging and genetic engineering are coming together to probe the biophysics of cytoplasm inside living animals.

The planet is getting hotter, but one factor in particular makes it hard to tell just how hot it will get. Physicists and computer scientists are racing to solve the problem of clouds.

Intuition breaks down once we’re dealing with the endless. To begin with: Some infinities are bigger than others.

In an 1874 paper, Georg Cantor proved that there are different sizes of infinity and changed math forever. A trove of newly unearthed letters shows that it was also an act of plagiarism.

Growing tissues can crack, break, and dissociate to form structures that can later withstand immense forces.

Microscopic crystals extracted from meteorites could help settle a debate about the birth of our patch of the Milky Way.

Columnist Natalie Wolchover explores whether applied category theory can be “green” math.

A straightforward conjecture about runners moving around a track turns out to be equivalent to many complex mathematical questions. Three new proofs mark the first significant progress on the problem in decades.