Every pure mathematician has experienced that awkward moment when asked, “So what’s your research good for?” There are standard responses: a proud “Nothing!”; an explanation that mathematical research is an art form like, say, Olympic gymnastics (with a much smaller audience); or a stammered response that so much of pure math has ended up finding application that maybe, perhaps, ... 05.20.13 | more >>

If Hollywood’s right, the apocalypse will be brutal. Aliens, nuclear war, zombies, plague, enslavement by supersmart robots — none of them are good endings. Some archaeologists, however, believe an apocalypse has already come and gone. About 75,000 years ago, they say, a monster volcanic eruption nearly wiped out humankind, leaving behind only a few thousand people to repopulate the world. 05.13.13 | more >>

If greed is good, as Gordon Gekko proclaimed in the 1987 movie Wall Street, then economics ought to be a superlative science. 05.06.13 | more >>

Once you hit a certain age, visiting a doctor is basically a guilt trip. All that satisfying stuff you eat, drink or smoke is killing you, a white-coated overachiever tells you. You need to exercise and lose weight, or the grim reaper will be at your door long before you’re ready. And it will all be your fault. 04.29.13 | more >>

Last year, J.C. Penney CEO Ron Johnson put an end to “fake prices,” the ones that customers see but rarely pay because of coupons and sales. Instead, the clothing retailer decided to sell items at cheaper everyday prices in an effort to “stop playing games” with consumers. By June, Johnson had conceded that this strategy wasn’t working. Penney brought back coupons in September; the ... 04.22.13 | more >>

What do five Porsches, several Kentucky thoroughbreds and a three-story building in Guatemala City have in common? They’ve all been swallowed by sinkholes. 04.15.13 | more >>

Science is an oddly successful enterprise. On the whole, it provides an impressive guide to reality. From antibiotics and atomic bombs to laser beams and X-rays, science enables humans to forge powerful tools from nature’s secrets. 04.08.13 | more >>

Some scientists have proposed designating a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, that would cover the period since humans became the predominant environmental force on the planet. But when would you have it begin? Some geologists argue that the Anthropocene began with the Industrial Revolution, when fossil fuel consumption started influencing climate. Others point back several thousand ... 04.01.13 | more >>

When a top-tier mathematician announced in August that he had proved one of the greatest problems in mathematics, the claim was trumpeted in the New York Times, Nature, Science and the Boston Globe. 03.25.13 | more >>

Time after time, physicists have tried to explain time. Many claim to have succeeded. But they haven’t. Otherwise everybody would quit trying to explain it all over again. 03.21.13 | more >>

Depending on your age, the word troll might evoke a nasty creature who lives under a bridge — or a nasty creature who posts inflammatory comments online. The former, found mostly in Scandinavian folktales, is typically a dim-witted beast, not inclined to help humans. The latter (judgment on wits aside) is also rarely considered helpful. But new research suggests a more nefarious role for ... 03.12.13 | more >>

Chicken Little is right. The sky is falling.

The million-plus people living in Chelyabinsk, Russia, got that message on February 15, when a space rock some 17 meters across detonated over their homes. People rushed to the windows in wonderment as a blaze of light arced through the sky; seconds later many of them got a face full of glass shards. It was the most damaging cosmic collision since 1908, when an even bigger asteroid chunk blew ... 03.07.13 | more >>

Fight Club had its First Rule (don’t talk about Fight Club). The Transporter enforces Rule Number 1 (never change the deal). And NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs observes Rule 1 (never mix the suspects together in the same room). 03.07.13 | more >>

Fermat’s Last Theorem is so simple to state, but so hard to prove. Though the 350-year-old claim is a straightforward one about integers, the proof that University of Oxford mathematician Andrew Wiles finally created for it nearly two decades ago required almost unimaginably complex theoretical machinery. The proof was a dazzling demonstration of that machinery’s value, but one aspect of ... 02.20.13 | more >>

Science is not a democracy. Nature’s laws are not subject to the whims of popular vote. A scientific theory succeeds by providing logical explanations for puzzling phenomena and making correct predictions about the outcomes of new experiments. It doesn’t matter how many scientists believed in the theory beforehand (or even afterward, for that matter). 02.20.13 | more >>

Movie studios love awards season. Winning one of the glittery statuettes that are annually bestowed upon those in the biz can provide a hefty box office boost. But if you are going to put money on which movies will sell the most tickets in the long run, accolades from critics and peers aren’t a very good crystal ball. When it comes to predicting box office success, it turns out that the ... 02.07.13 | more >>

People talk a lot about speeding up drug development. But for some problems, they should also focus on speeding up the drugs. For brain disorders like depression, the medicines prescribed by doctors can take weeks or months to kick in. (And even after the long wait, the number of people who experience complete turnarounds is surprisingly low.) 02.01.13 | more >>

For all the deference to “laws” of nature that supposedly govern everything that happens, the truth is that randomness rules the world. 01.23.13 | more >>

Sometimes a little shake-up is exactly what scientists need to make a major breakthrough. Other times it can send them to jail. 01.23.13 | more >>

Medicare could waste billions of dollars, bankrupt small businesses and leave seniors without crucial equipment like oxygen tanks and wheelchairs, some economists warn, with a new auction-based purchasing plan that ignores mathematical principles of competitive bidding. 01.11.13 | more >>

In olden days, before the Star Trek holodeck and movies like TRON and The Matrix, philosophers used to wonder whether life was but a dream. Nowadays they’re more concerned that reality could be just a computer simulation. 01.11.13 | more >>