The U.S. News &World Report rankings of colleges and universities are largely arbitrary, according to a new mathematical analysis.

The mathematics of dynamical systems reveals ocean dynamics, an understanding that could improve the monitoring of ocean processes.

In 1993, the U.S. Congress cut off funds for the Superconducting Super Collider, or SSC. After years of planning, two years of major construction and $2 billion spent, the most enduring achievement of the stillborn project was a tunnel from nothing to nowhere near Waxahachie, Texas. The SSC would have enabled us to explore nature in more extreme conditions — higher concentrations of energy — than ever before. It would have yielded fundamental new insights into the origin of the universe and the nature of matter, space and time. Thousands of scientists devoted big parts...

The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, a cooperative computing project, helps find a prime that has nearly 13 million digits.

Imagine twisting a beam of light into a knot, as if it were a piece of a string. Now grab another light beam and tie it around the first, forming its own loop. Tie on another and another, until all of space is filled up with loops of light. Sounds preposterous, but a pair of physicists has shown that light can do just this — at least in theory. Visible light, along with all other forms of electromagnetic radiation, is governed by Maxwell’s equations, and the researchers have found a new solution to these equations in which light forms linked knots. The team is now working to...

Eugene Spafford is executive director of Purdue University’s Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security, one of the world’s leading centers for information security. His research focuses on issues related to securing computers, networks and their data against criminal activities and failures. He has testified before various congressional committees, advised agencies within the executive branch and worked with the U.S. military and the FBI. Here, freelance science writer Susan Gaidos questions Spafford about computer security issues.   You’v...

Mathematicians create videos that help in visualizing four-dimensional objects.

Math Trek: If we have free will, so do subatomic particles, mathematicians claim to prove.

Quasicrystals are bizarre, rare, mysterious materials blending mathematical order and irregularity. A new, unexpected material halfway between a regular crystal and a quasicrystal may help reveal their secrets.

Math Trek: The National Aquatics Center in Beijing, newly built for the Olympics, is a glowing cube of bubbles. The mathematics behind it are built around Lord Kelvin's tetrakaidecahedra and the physics of foam.